Release 2 is a big step for me in release 1 we worked on other students project but in this one we will be working on live projects that people actually use. This is kinda scary because up to now if my stuff doesn’t work its just a bad mark but now it will be put up to real scrutiny. I think that is where lots of my hesitance to start this release comes from there is a lot of anxiety and fear of my code being rejected.
All that aside it is time to be brave and find a project to work on. To start this I looked through the recommended projects and saw Brave which I am familiar with as it is the browser I like to use on my phone. I don’t have any experience with Android development but they have a desktop browser that I was unfamiliar with. It turns out Brave include many features that I find attractive such as a pre installed ad script and cookie blocker that in today’s age of bitcoin mining is very useful.
Now comes the time where I start to investigate the project and get a feel of how things work and the best way to do that is to see how they communicate. Their main forms of communication are GitHub, Discord, and a Forum but the most use comes from the GitHub itself. The GitHub Is very active with new bugs coming in every hour or so and people replying in the comments which means shows me that this is very much still active and will be a good project to work on.
First things first was to take a look at the CONTRIBUTING.md and get it installed on my machine. With a few simple commands I had all the files and dependencies that I needed to get it up and running.
Now that it is working it is time to see what doesn’t work and get to fixing it but that is for the next blog post.
Lucas' Blog for SPO600 & OSD600 