This document summarizes the author's experience making their first commit to the Rails codebase. It describes the requirement to add a custom rake task, researching the solution by reading blogs and Rails Guides. The author then forks the Rails repository, makes the code changes in a new branch, writes a detailed commit message, and submits a pull request. The pull request was quickly merged and the author shares lessons learned around approaching the community and starting small contributions.

1. The roadtrip that led to my first Rails commit
and how you could make yours too..

2. The requirement
1. A custom rake task with command line arguments
passed to it
2. Run the rake task for specific environments
3. Do this in Rails 4.1.x

3. The search
● Blogs, Stackoverflow
○ Found a blog closest to my requirement
● Rails Guides
○ Checked what they said about custom rake tasks

4. The commit
The actual code that used the changes

5. The process
1. Forking Rails for the first time?
a. Fork the Rails repo from this link
2. Already forked Rails repo but not updated it?
a. Do a fetch, checkout master branch
b. Rebase local master with remote master
c. You can find the exact git commands here
3. Follow up steps applicable to step 1 and 2 mentioned
above
a. Create a meaningful branch name
b. Make your changes
c. Use a meaningful commit message
d. Create a Pull Request(PR)
e. Add a summary of changes to explain your PR

6. An example of using meaningful commit
details

7. The experience
● Rails core team members
○ very friendly
○ approachable
● Commit was merged in almost no time
● Here’s the pull request if you’d like to see it
● I have blogged about the experience here

8. How you could make your first Rails
commit?
● Find missing gaps(I just did that and it helped)
● Refer pointers mentioned on the Rails guides
○ An example guideline that they’ve mentioned here -

9. How you could make your first commit?(contd.)

10. ● Commit as a pair - yes that’s possible :)
● Simply see how others are contributing
● Read articles/videos from others experiences
○ How to land your first patch in Rails(Ben Orenstein)
○ RailsConf 2014 - Get More Hands on Your Ke
(Manik Juneja)
○ How I submitted my 1st patch to Rails (Nithin Bekal)
How you could make your first commit?(contd.)

11. Takeaways
1. Start small but get started
2. You get confidence to contribute more
3. You feel more connected with the
community
4. Leap of faith - Can one be more?

12. Thank you
Photo credits
● Open Source Rails - David Anderton(@dwanderton)

13. Twitter - @mohnishgj
Github - boddhisattva
Blog - boddhisattvadedicates.blogspot.com
Mohnish G Jadwani