Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Contributing to PrestaShop

Ever since I started using open source software, I've gotten a lot of help in the various support forums, and try to help others in the forums whenever possible in return.

However, when I posted my "forgotten password" change for PrestaShop, and someone from Bellini Services suggest that I submit it as a pull request to the PrestaShop team, I thought "Yea, well, actually, why is it that I've never contributed to an open source project?" Maybe now is the time to start.

After reading the PrestaShop guide for making pull requests, I decided to wait until after work some day when I wasn't expected home for dinner. However, late yesterday I found a quick one line bug fix in the core PrestaShop code that looked like a good place to get my feet wet.

Following the guide was quicker and easier than I thought, and I had my pull request up in no time. First thing this morning, Maxime from the PrestaShop core code team pointed out that I had actually used the wrong branch for my pull request (I used 1.6 instead of 1.6.1.x), which was simple to fix. Maxime also indicated they would update the documentation to avoid future problems like this. Actually, if I had read this article, I could have saved myself some time.

He also indicated that a new forgotten password feature was already checked into the development branch. This one appears to be pretty much the same as what I coded, so I will skip sending it as a pull request.

All in all, I was surprised at how easy contributing is (thanks to the miracle of git), and how quickly PrestaShop (or at least Maxime) responded. Bottom line: contributing to PrestaShop is easy. I would encourage anyone with the talent to take it up as a hobby 

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