About the training missions
Some video games have a “training level” where you can get shot at without dying. These training missions are a place to learn open source contribution skills without getting burned.
A training mission shuns “manuals” and long, boring blobs of text. Instead it says, “Here’s a short, concrete task to perform. Interact with this web-based robot here, and it will tell you if you succeeded.”
Before the missions: Prepare your command line
Contributing to free, open source software frequently requires using a text-based command line. Our training missions are written with that in mind. A command line is available on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and other systems, and we can show you how to launch it and play around in it.
If you're not sure how to use a command prompt to run programs like tar, diff, and git, on Windows you can get started with "Prepare your command line" below. We have not written our own instructions for other platforms yet, but you can try these external resources for Ubuntu and Mac OS.
Windows
Get to know the tech used within open source
These missions give you a tour of command-line tools you may run into when contributing to free software.
Using tar
Using diff and patch
Practice contributing to a project
These missions let you practice sharing a patch with a maintainer.
Using Subversion
Using git
Where they came from, and where they're going
You can read about vision behind the training missions on the OpenHatch blog. They were initially built as a Google Summer of Code project.
Now, our community of volunteers takes care of creating more missions and fixing bugs in them. We could use feedback, and if you want to jump in to help, we'd love to have you! Get in touch with us and let us know what you think (or how you want to help out!). If you get stuck, read our tips.