Hacktoberfest: Documentation

We're in the last week of Hacktoberfest!

So far, participating in Hacktoberfest has been great. I've been able to contribute to very different projects and work towards the goals I had set for myself.

My work on Dashboard allowed me to improve my web skills (not as much as I'd have liked, but still) and collaborate in a project that has been around for some time. It's not a big project, but it's a very interesting one because of all the different components that it has and how useful it is for the people involved in it.

PenguinV was my chance to collaborate in a project that I really like, and also a great opportunity to face a real, scary challenge. Having to contribute using OpenCL, something I wasn't familiar with at all before, was one of those things than can easily make you think that you shouldn't be in this field.

For my last contribution, I wanted to work on PenguinV again, but since we're at the end of the month and the PenguinV community hasn't responded (yet) when I told them that I wanted to work on some issues, I decided to look around to see if I could find some other interesting projects.

And I found ImCompressor. ImCompressor is an image processor that works with lossy and lossless compression. What I found interesting about this project is the fact that it's a very young one. A small group of developers started it a month ago. All my other contributions during Hacktoberfest were related to bigger projects that have been around for a while, so I thought it could be interesting to contribute to a young project and maybe become a core part of it. 

When I found the project, they were getting ready to release version 0.8, so since there wasn't much that I could offer (remember, it's a very young project), I mentioned to the team that my first language is Spanish and that I could add a Spanish translation. They welcomed the idea, and I thought it was a good way to introduce myself, getting familiar with the project, and keep an eye on new issues popping up so I could work on them and become a main contributor.

Oh, before I forget, when I started the translation I realized the ImCompressor team uses Poedit, a cross-platform, open source, translation editor. Another interesting project, I also want to keep an eye on it and maybe see if I can contribute to it in the future.

I like ImCompressor. I've had issues with lossless JPEGS in the past, and I think this project could help many people. I hope it won't turn out to be one of those many projects that dies a few months after being born.

Well, and that's all for this month. As I said in another post, I really want Hacktoberfest to become a yearly tradition, but not the only excuse to keep collaborating with open source projects.

As usual, good hacking and have fun!

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Hacktoberfest: WIP

Hacktoberfest, week 3.

Only a few days left, and I just submitted my third PR.

I was considering giving home-assistant another go, as I mentioned in my previous post, but there are so many issues out there that I thought that maybe it wasn't worth it.

For my first issue, I enhanced the capabilities of CDOT's Dashboard, and I decided to take on the next related issue for that part of the project: update the front-end.

I updated the front-end with a new panel that shows pull requests that are pending for review. Hopefully this new panel will help the team keep track of pull requests and it'll speed up the workflow.

One of my goals for this Hacktoberfest was to improve my web development skills, and this issue was going to be my opportunity to do that. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out the way I was expecting. I spent very little time writing React and most of the time doing CSS. Yes, it gave me the the chance to learn some new CSS tricks, but it also helped me remember why I've been putting off improving my web development skills and why I've always thought that CSS is a creation of the devil.

Dashboard with the new panel

My pull request has been accepted and merged, so I'm expecting to see the new panel up and running any time soon (to be honest, that's very exciting!).

So far, Hacktoberfest has been a really enjoyable and amazing learning experience, and I'm almost sad that it's going to be over in a week. I really want it to become a yearly tradition, if time permits.

As usual, good hacking and have fun!

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Hacktoberfest: enhancement

We're in week 2 of Hacktoberfest, and things are going well so far.

After submitting my pull request for Dashboard, I was planning to start working on home-assistant, as I mentioned in my previous post, but it seems that the only way to get their development environment to work is using docker. I've used docker before, in fact, I've had epic battles with docker over iptables, so I decided that I was going to try something else.

That something else is penguinV, "a simple and fast C++ image processing library focus on heterogeneous systems. The library is designed with an idea to have simple common API for CPUs and GPUs simplifying developer's work on context switching between devices".

I was very excited about working on this project because it was the perfect opportunity for me the get familiar enough with its code so I can start contributing to it in a regular basis soon. I chose this issue because it seemed both challenging and doable. I wanted to work on something "real", not related to documentation or fixing syntax, but at the same time, something not too overwhelming so I wouldn't be able to finish it.

The issue was about implementing something that would compare 2 images. Sounds easy, right? Well, yes and no. I've done image processing before, things like loading images from disk without using libraries, implementing  alpha blending, rotation and inversion... but for this issue I had to work with OpenCL, and that was the challenging part. OpenCL uses parallel computing and run-time compilation, and yes, for someone who's not a very experienced programmer and has never used OpenCL before, it is as scary as it sounds.

I was very lucky that the penguinV community is very active, and as soon as a I had questions they put me in the right direction to be able to complete the task. I submitted my pull request and I made some minor changes requested by the reviewer.

This was an amazing experience. I would really like to keep contributing to penguinV and I'll probably use it in my current projects.

So, home-assistant next week? We'll see.

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Hacktoberfest: good first issue

It's Hacktoberfest time!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm very excited about Hacktoberfest, not only because I'll be able to contribute to some cool open source project, but also because I'll have the chance to improve  and test my skills, and maybe try to take on some scary project that will force me to learn and get familiar with new technologies.

My intention was to work on some issues that I found interesting and relevant for the type of skills that I'd like to develop, and also getting familiar with some interesting projects.

Unfortunately, things rarely go the way you want in software development, so I had to come up with a plan B for my very first Hacktoberfest issue.

At first, I wanted to work on an issue in the home-assistant project, but I had some problems setting up the development environment, and since they haven't replied yet, I thought I could work on something else while I wait for their advice.

Since I was running out of time, and all the other issues that I wanted to work on require more than a couple of days of coding, I turned to a project that I've worked on before, knowing that I could find some interesting issues that I could fix within the available time that I had.

This project is Dashboard, maintained by CDOT's RAs.

Dashboard project (running in debug mode with fake data)

Dashboard displays information about the projects that are currently in development at CDOT, along with some infrastructure information and scheduled events. It populates some of the panels with data fetched from Github using Github's API.
For the PR Reminder panel (WIP) and the Help Wanted panel (coming soon), it was necessary to filter some of the data fetched from Github's API so the only issues and pull requests used to populate those 2 panels would be the ones with the appropriate labels. The issue that I worked on specifically requested filtering out issues that didn't have the Help Wanted label and also making sure that all the used issues included a priority label so they could be appropriately sorted.

It was a quick fix, but a very important one since the Help Wanted panel will be up soon (that's another issue I'd like to work on for Hacktoberfest), and all the RAs at CDOT will be able to have updated and sorted information about issues that might need help (hence the Help Wanted label) and/or pull requests that need review.

Hopefully, I'll be able to work on home-assistant's issue next week, but if I can't, I might take on a penguinV's issue that will help me get familiar with their code base and maybe I'll be able to contribute more in the future.

So, good hacking and have fun!

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