Open Source Participation
=========================

**Why Smarter.** Smarter is developed in public, with issues, discussions, pull requests, code
review, conventional commits and automated releases, so a course or a capstone can end with a
real contribution to a real project. A merged pull request is a public, verifiable piece of work
for a student's portfolio.

**Look at.** Issues labelled
`good first issue <https://github.com/smarter-sh/smarter/labels/good%20first%20issue>`__, and
the project's `pull requests <https://github.com/smarter-sh/smarter/pulls>`__.

**Read.** :doc:`/smarter-framework/guides/contributing`, :doc:`/smarter-framework/guides/code-of-conduct`,
:doc:`/smarter-framework/guides/developer-guidelines`, :doc:`/smarter-framework/guides/semantic-versioning`.

**Exercises.**

- Choose an issue, discuss the approach with the maintainers in the issue before writing code,
  and see a pull request through review.
- Improve the documentation: a clearer explanation, a missing example, or a corrected command.
  This is the easiest first contribution, and one of the most valued.
- Read the AGPL-3.0 license, and explain what it allows and requires, and how it differs from the
  MIT and Apache licenses.

.. note::

   Contact the maintainers in `GitHub Discussions <https://github.com/smarter-sh/smarter/discussions>`__
   before a large class starts contributing, so that they can prepare suitable issues and plan
   for the reviews.

**Course plans.** Three complete, ready-to-teach plans, each with a schedule, graded assignments
and rubrics, two capstone projects, recommended texts, further study and technical prerequisites.
See :doc:`course-formats` for what the formats have in common.

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1

   Classroom bootcamp: 8 hours <open-source/bootcamp>
   Two-week online course: 6 hours <open-source/two-week>
   Four-week online course: 12 hours <open-source/four-week>

See the :doc:`Smarter Instructor Guide </smarter-instructor>` to install Smarter and set up
a class.