Introduction & getting started with contributions

[iamnitishsah]

Hi everyone 👋

I’m Nitish, a B.Tech student at NIT Rourkela and a backend-focused developer working mainly with Django REST Framework and FastAPI. I’m planning to start contributing to OpenWISP and wanted to introduce myself before diving deeper.

I’ve previously worked on backend system design, secure API development, and distributed data handling, and I’m particularly interested in infrastructure-oriented, production-scale open-source projects. OpenWISP aligns very well with the kind of problems I want to work on long-term.

Before I begin, I had a few questions to make sure I start in the right direction:

1.For a new contributor, which repositories or components would you recommend starting with to understand the core architecture?

2.Are there specific areas (issues, refactors, docs, tests, small features) that are especially suitable for initial contributions?

3. Is there anything maintainers typically expect contributors to do before opening their first PR (design discussion, issue confirmation, proposal, etc.)?

4.For contributors aiming to apply to GSoC in the future, is early work on any particular modules especially valuable?

I’ll start by studying the documentation and codebase in parallel, and I plan to share any derivative work or ideas here for feedback before proposing changes.

Thanks for maintaining such a valuable project, and I’m looking forward to learning and contributing.

— Nitish

[nemesifier]

1. core modules, 2 ask maintainers in the dev chat, 3 basic prs, 4 be useful to the community and do not add overhead to maintainers.

See https://github.com/orgs/openwisp/discussions/1181.

Guys, too many new contributors are asking the same questions over and over, this is not helping maintainers, is adding overhead: more work for us. We don't have time.

Please follow the discussion in the https://matrix.to/#/#openwisp_development:gitter.im chat, activity will accelerate after Christmas and New Year Day.