Contributing

We have a separate donate page. This article is about contributing in everything but donations.

Hello there, glad you are reading this page. We have a broad spectrum of topics to contribute, and some of them do not even require programming or scripting knowledge. With each contribution, you don't just get to help out your fellow postmarketOS friends, but there's always a chance to learn something new and sharpening your skills along the way. And of course fun, fame and epic stories to tell to your grandchildren about what a badass hacker you have been. Now pick what interests you most.

Testing Team

If you have already familiarized yourself with postmarketOS a bit, consider joining the Testing Team.

GitLab issues

Consider subscribing to the GitLab issues. The most important discussions happen there, on all levels. From broad visions to implementation details and bug reports. Voice your opinions and help out others with your knowledge, so there are more people that can in turn help out yourself when you get stuck. If you are a developer, consider testing and reviewing incoming patches (merge requests). The more eyeballs on the code, the less bugs get introduced.

To work on something specific, see the issues tagged with help wanted (easy ones).

Documentation

Wiki documentation

• Create new pages if you found a new postmarketOS topic worth documenting. If you did not find what you want to create, click "create new page" in the search results.
• Structure:
  • Improve the structure of the wiki, make sure there's a clear path from the main page to every specific page that the user would be interested in
  • Fix the orphaned pages and links to non-existing pages (do not add more of those!)
  • Add and use wiki categories where it makes sense
• Formatting:
  • Proper template usage
  • Proper wiki formatting
  • Put code listings/shell-session outputs in syntax highlighting blocks
  • Fix pages with syntax highlighting errors
• Other fixes for existing pages:
  • Check if the sentences make sense
  • Fix typos and grammar
  • Add links to relevant GitLab issues and other pages

Hacking

• Make sure you did not overlook the help wanted (easy ones) links above
• Install postmarketOS to a real device or boot it with QEMU
• Port and mainline devices you own
• Start dogfooding and improve postmarketOS for your real life use case
• Improve the packages we already have (How about your favorite UI?)
• Get involved with lowlevel hacking

Translating

Help translate postmarketOS.

Help out others

Get active in the community and help everyone along the way, with motivation or practical tips on whatever they are doing.

Tell your friends!

• Print yourself a postmarketOS fair trade t-shirt and wear it!
• Write blog posts on your own platforms
• Share our web links
• Make good photos/videos of devices running postmarketOS for the wiki and for /r/postmarketOS
• Tell your favorite online or print magazine about postmarketOS

Help upstream projects

You probably know the whole "we are standing on shoulders of giants" speech. Depending on the components you are looking at in postmarketOS, the giants are not that big and bloated, but of course they would happily accept help by contributors interested in their projects.

• Alpine Linux
• Plasma Mobile
• Maemo Leste

Administrative

This list is for admins only, most people don't need to bother with this stuff.

• Repository maintenance
• Create a new pmbootstrap release
• Merge Workflow

See also

• Contributing for (advanced?) Dummies
• How you can help the Linux Mobile ecosystem
• How to help (lowlevel hacking post)
• Get involved (one year post)
• How can you help? (219 days post)