A talk at AppiumConf 2019 https://confengine.com/appium-conf-2019/proposal/8714/start-contributing-to-oss-projects-on-your-way

1. Start contributing to
OSS projects on your way
Kazuaki Matsuo
Senior Software Engineer, Device Automation

2. About me
• Kazuaki Matsuo
• from !, GitHub: KazuCocoa, Twitter: @Kazu_cocoa
• HeadSpin
• Software Engineer now, former was a test/QA engineer
• Maintain Appium project
• Five years after my first commit

3. Topic
• My experience in OSS world
• Start contributing to OSS
• How you can work in OSS Community

4. Takeaway
• Get an opportunity/motivation to contribute to Appium (OSS)
project

5. My experience in OSS

6. 2012
2014
No contributions

7. 2012
2014

8. 2012
2014

9. 2012
2014

10. my first commitment for Appium repo

11. 2018
2019

12. Commit more

13. Maintain Ruby client
• Ruby was the primly language in Cookpad
• Decided to use Ruby
• Ruby lib status changed to “call for maintainers”
• https://github.com/appium/ruby_lib/issues/337
• I started to contribute it

14. Changes
• W3C support
• Separate core part
• https://github.com/appium/ruby_lib_core
• Collaboration
• https://github.com/watir/tap_watir
• https://github.com/watir project for mobile

15. Step into server side further
• Appium has:
• Clients: Not only for Ruby client
• Servers: For iOS/Android
• Languages
• NodeJS, Java/Kotlin, Objective-C/Swift, Ruby, Python, .NET

16. Nowadays
• As a part of my work at HeadSpin
• As a part of my private work

17. I talked…
• Fix issues I faced as a small start to contribute to OSS projects
• Leverage to other repositories/issues or more difficult issues

18. How you can work in OSS
Community

19. Only committing to the codebase?
• In various community, I heard this question frequently
• Exactly committing to the codebase is very important
• But other activities also very important as a community

20. Features/Documentations

21. Support users

22. Use them and evolve automation

24. Community in Japan

25. Localisation
• Desktop
• https://
crowdin.com
/project/
appium-
desktop

26. Documentations
• Example
• https://github.com/appium/appium/tree/master/docs
• We commit to documentation as well, but maybe they are not
enough for users
• Building document support also very appreciate
• Improving documentation for users as a user is also important

27. Appium forum
• https://discuss.appium.io/

28. Good first issue/Help wanted
• e.g. Adding unit/functional tests
• Yesterday’s workshop: appium/python-client/pull/398, appium/
python-client/pull/399

29. Improve error messages
• e.g. appium-base-driver
• appium/appium-base-driver/pull/329

30. Improve error messages
• e.g. appium-base-driver
• appium/appium-base-driver/pull/329

31. Takeaway
• Start contributing from small changes
• get reviews
• leverage to other repositories
• OSS community needs you can work in
• Documentation
• Q&A
• Fixing issues / add new features (try to find an issue)

32. Thanks
email: kazu@headspin.io
Twitter: @Kazu_cocoa