Hacktoberfest is an annual event conducted by DigitalOcean to encourage participation in open source domain.
Every year in the month of October, participants choose a repository with a ‘hacktoberfest’ label that they want to contribute, to participate in this event. They make pull requests to the repository and if it’s accepted, it’ll count as a contribution to Hacktoberfest.
Once it is over, the first 55k participants with at least 4 pull requests approved will be eligible for t-shirt and swags.
- Add a ‘CONTRIBUTING.md’ file to your repository containing the contributing guidelines.
- Add the ‘hacktoberfest’ label to your repository.
- Add the ‘Hacktoberfest’ label to the issues you’re considering for Hacktoberfest.
- A participant’s pull request is considered to be accepted for the event if you have merged it or it is approved by reviewers or it has the label ‘hacktoberfest-accepted’.
- To encourage beginners participation, you can raise issues for them after putting the label ‘first-timers-only’ on those issues.
- Many of the participant make useless pull request just to claim their swag pack, you can just use the labels ‘spam’ or ‘invalid’ for them so that they are not accepted.
- Read the contributing guidelines provided in the repository itself, usually in the form of ‘CONTRIBUTING.md’ file to know how to contribute to the repository.
- Write clean code, use comments wherever necessary.
- Write clear commit messages and proper description of the pull request you’re creating.
- Use the templates for creating an issue or pull request if they’re present.
- Don’t focus on multiple concerns while making a pull request, keep your pull request small and focused.
- If you can add tests or screenshots to your pull request, it would serve as a plus point while reviewing your pull request.
- Make sure that all automated test cases pass for your pull request.
- Respond to feedback and ask questions to project maintainers in case of any query.
- Be patient and don’t make spam pull requests as they will be rejected and labelled as spam or invalid.
“Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere”. It is therefore advised to participate in Hacktoberfest to enhance your knowledge and to enter in the world of open source apart from receiving goodies. For additional information and registration process, visit the “Hacktoberfest’21” website.