Best way to start making contributions as a beginner

[HackerManOSU]

Hey everyone,

I’m new to contributing to Jaeger and wanted to ask for some advice on the best way to get started. I’ve read through the contribution documentation and understand the general workflow and all that.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been monitoring the issue list. I noticed that when the more beginner-friendly issues open up, they often seem to get a PR connected to them pretty quickly (or atleast get claimed), sometimes before I can tell whether the issue is still available. I know Jaeger has multiple repositories and that the project recommends starting with good-first-issue labels (that's what I would target regardless), but I’m wondering what the best approach is when those issues are already claimed or have linked PRs so quickly.

I want to avoid doing unneccesary duplicate work and am weary of opening any issues myself as I am still trying to understand everything, but it seems like most issues are immediately claimed upon opening.

Any advice for a beginner trying to make a useful first contribution would be appreciated. Or perhaps even if someone has a beginner issue in mind that they didn't get the chance to create an issue about yet but wouldn't mind letting me take a go at, that would be awesome!

Thanks!

[chahatsagarmain]

Hi @HackerManOSU ,

There are several repositories under the Jaeger project with beginner-friendly issues that you can start with. I noticed a few open "good first issues" in the jaeger-ui repository as well.

I’d also recommend spending some time using Jaeger itself, exploring the codebase, and going through the documentation. As you become familiar with the project, you can identify potential improvements or bugs and open issues yourself after discussing them with the maintainers on the community and contribution channels.