Mentored Contribution

Learn while helping improve Drupal core! Plenty of mentors will be available to help you get started. If you're not sure where to start contributing, or not even sure about the whole sprint thing, this is for you! This is one of our many sprints. If you are new to contribution, attend our First-time Sprinter Workshop first to set up tools like IRC, Git, and a Drupal 8 development environment, and then join this Mentored Contribution.

The Mentored Core Sprint has been held at DrupalCon since Sydney 2013 and at many local and regional Drupal events.

Why come

If you're like most Drupal users, you've been telling yourself for months that you should start contributing to Drupal core. This sprint is your chance to get started with in-person training and mentoring from friendly, experienced core contributors. If you've already started to work on core, come meet other contributors, hang out in person, and work on manageable tasks in the Drupal core queue. The goal is to help you help with core.

Who it's for

This sprint is intended for first-time contributors and anyone with Drupal site building experience to learn how to contribute to Drupal core. Our mentors will help match tasks suitable for programmers and non-programmers alike.

We particularly welcome participants from all experience levels, backgrounds, genders, races, sexual identities, religions, ages, abilities and other marginalized groups in our community to participate. The world is diverse and we can only make the best Drupal experience for everyone with your inclusion.

What to expect

We'll kick things off with a brief introduction, and then we'll help match people with issues that are right for their skill levels and areas of interest. Free training is also provided to help new contributors set up a development environment and learn about the contribution process.

What to bring

1. An interest in Drupal contribution
2. A laptop with a Drupal 8 development environment

How to get set up

Don't have your development environment yet? No problem! Come to the First Time Sprinter Workshop on Friday

Setting up a Drupal 8 environment

You're also encouraged to set up your Drupal 8 development environment on your own if you prefer. Here's what you'll need:

1. An account on Drupal.org.
2. Dreditor, a browser plugin for Firefox and Chrome.
3. And local tools. Two options for setting up local tools:
   • You can follow the instructions at https://drupal.org/tools to get your local environments set up with:
     • An IRC client (XChat on Linux/Windows or LimeChat on OS X)
     • Git installed and configured
     • Apache Webserver, PHP application server and MySQL Database server
     • Optional text editor
   • Or, you can install each piece separately:
     • An IRC client like ChatZilla, a browser plugin, HexChat or Pidgin for Linux and Windows, LimeChat for Macs.
     • A shell. Macs have terminal in Applications/Utilities. For Windows, cygwin is common.
     • A local web server. Some options:
       • Installing the Acquia Dev Desktop (Mac or Windows)
       • Installing MAMP (Mac)
       • Installing WAMP (Windows)
       • Installing a web server on Ubuntu (Linux)
       • Drupal 8 + drush + git stack (All Platforms)
     • A code-friendly text editor. (Sublime Text 2 is a free, cross-platform text editor.)
     • Git (install and configure; video)

Also recommended

• Drush

References

• Drupal Git reference
• Drupal API documentation
• Drupal coding standards
• Drupal documentation standards
• Drupal core gates

Want to help mentor?

Are you already familiar with setting up a development environment or with the core contribution process? Want to help other contributors? We need lots of mentors to work with our first-time contributors.

Sign up to be a Mentor