1: Learning a Git convention through Qubes OS guidelines

July 3, 2024

I am adapting correspondence to blog post form.

I learned a lot (over time, not immediately) by following the “Commit message guidelines” section in Qubes OS's coding style guide (and the whole “Coding style” page in general).

This has really improved my (very minor, mostly non-technical) contributions, and to be prepared for working with Git at Northeastern's Align Masters program in Cybersecurity in fall 2024.

Some other related documents from Qubes OS are:

Its page on “How to edit the documentation”, and
Its page for “Documentation style guide”

I hope this can be a starting point for guiding other programmers on how to navigate contributing to open-source projects. Of course, other projects will be different from the Qubes OS project, though the conceptual procedure is the same: find out if a project has contribution guidelines, and then follow its ground rules for a smooth, streamlined (hopefully) helpful and productive experience.