How to attract developers to contribute to your project on Github
For quite some time, I was planning to create an open source android application and publish it on Google Play. The idea was to learn and attract beginners as well as experienced android developers to contribute to my project. This post will be mostly generic to all kinds of software developers and you can still apply the below methods even if you are not an Android developer.
As most of the programmers often have quite a few side projects themselves, getting them to participate in your project can be a challenge. I would suggest you to set realistic expectations for participation. I have been exploring this for many days now and have made a list of points that can help in achieving the same.
1. Adding appropriate tags
Tagging is an essential ingredient which is used to identify your project. It can be used to mention what technologies you have used in that project, which OS does it support, etc.
2. Add a README file
The intent of this file is to store information about your project. It can contain description about your project, instructions of integration(in case of libraries),etc. This information should be as detailed as possible. You can support it by adding pictures of your application if it contains a user interface.
Note — Adding snapshots of your application is essential for a successful open source project.
3. Add known issues in your project
You should add some already known issues, enhancements,etc in the Issues section of your android project. It helps potential contributors to dive-in to your code directly as finding issues in an existing project can turn out to be a time consuming task in itself. And trust me on this, there are many developers out there who usually don’t like to spend their time finding the issues. It gives them a head start.
4. Add documentation in code
I think you already know the importance of this. Documentation is very helpful in understanding the code and saves a lot of your time. Otherwise, it can be a boring task which will consume a lot of your time. Contributors will lose their interest from your project. If you don’t have your code documented yet, I suggest you start working on it and don’t forget to add it in your issues section. Who knows if someone is willing to contribute in your project by writing documentation for you.
5. Tell people about it
Presenting your project is the most important part of this entire process. If you don’t do it the right way or don’t do it all, your project might end up with zero contributions from others. It’s like you are throwing a party at your place and you are not inviting people.
This is what I’m trying to do here in this post ;)
I have created an audio recorder application in Android and I welcome everyone who is reading this post to contribute in any way you can. There is a lot of scope for improvement in this project for both Developers and QA Engineers. You can start by downloading the apk from play store and start exploring. The link is given below:
Playstore — https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.odio.adfree
Source — https://github.com/gbatra24/Odio
Don’t forget to check out my other posts. To read them, click here.
