Introduction
My name is Sophia Okito, I am a Java Backend Developer from Nigeria. This is my first open-source contribution and I am really excited to contribute. I have a lot of passion for learning new things and the interesting fact is I have never been terrible at any except singing. Software development is my biggest passion because it is a career where you get to learn every day. I have always longed for an opportunity to be an open-source contributor and I accomplished that with “She Code Africa” Contribution.
I worked on the Jenkins Pipeline Help. If you are not familiar with the Jenkins pipeline, you might not get the need for this but for the others, this is indeed a needed contribution, to me, a great achievement. The pipeline snippet generator is a very helpful tool for creating bits of code for individual steps, discovering new steps provided by plugins, or experimenting with different parameters for a particular step. However, from the Jenkins user feedback documentation, it was discovered there are need for more helpful documentation and examples.
Summary of the Boot Camp
The Bootcamp started on the 5th of April with an onboarding session where all the mentors were introduced as well as the mentees. We were told the best way to contribute and how we could fully benefit from this opportunity. Afterward, we started having various sessions with our mentors at least once a week. We also had the privilege of chatting with our mentors to ask for help when had any challenges. We spent the first week setting up our environment and the three more weeks understanding how plugins work in Jenkins and how to modify and install plugins. The last few weeks were dedicated to contributing. We went through the Jenkins users’ feedback documentation to know which plugins needed more documentation and examples. During all of this, the She Code Africa team organized subsequent sessions on how to be a successful open source contributor.
Challenges Faced
I had lots of challenges during this boot camp but the majority of it was technical issues I faced while trying to create my first pipeline and running it. This was mainly because of my unfamiliarity with Jenkins and little, navigating around the Jenkins UI. The greatest of them was creating credentials. It took a while before I could figure it out.
I also had issues understanding some of the plugins and how to use them. This time my mentors, @MarkEWaite, and @poddingue were heroic. @MarkEWaite is very helpful, patient, and kind. He took his time to explain each plugin and showed my team how to use them with various examples. This made it easier for me to make contributions to over three various plugins.
Experience Gained
I have learned a lot about open-source projects and how to be a contributor. I have also improved on my technical skills, how to use Jenkins to build a pipeline, how to build a pipeline script using the pipeline snippet generator, and how various Jenkins pipeline works. To check all the contributions I made on GitHub, click here. I have greatly improved on other soft skills, such as teamwork, communication, and collaboration, by giving feedback, and criticisms and generally communicating constructively.
Feedback
Videos on how various Jenkins plugin works, their benefits, and how it works with the snippet generator would be really appreciated by most Jenkins users and by future mentees.
Next Step
It has really been a wonderful experience and I would love to continue contributing after the Bootcamp ends. I thank the She Code Africa team and the Jenkins organization for this opportunity for me to be an open-source contributor.