Speaker
Description
When I started looking for a small, practical open source project to get my feet wet, I stumbled upon GNOME Chess Clock – a compact, well-crafted GTK application that brings a chess clock to the GNOME desktop. I had never worked on GNOME before, but my little Python skills and curiosity about the desktop ecosystem made it the perfect entry point.
In this talk I’ll walk you through the process of becoming a contributor:
- Finding the right project – how to surface “good first issues”, read the docs, and assess the codebase.
- Getting the development environment set up – from the GNOME SDK to the required Python bindings.
- Understanding the architecture – how the app is structured, how it uses GObject introspection, and where my patches fit in.
- Submitting a patch – from writing tests, to using Git, to navigating the review workflow on GitLab.
- Dealing with feedback – handling code review comments, learning from the maintainers, and iterating quickly.
- Impact and visibility – how my changes were merged, the community’s response, and what that taught me about collaboration.
Beyond the nuts-and-bolts, I’ll share lessons learned about open source culture, the value of small, incremental contributions, and how even a tiny bug fix can ripple through an ecosystem. Attendees will leave with a concrete playbook for starting their own GNOME adventure, a deeper appreciation for the desktop’s inner workings, and actionable advice for turning curiosity into meaningful code.
| Category | Encourage new contributors |
|---|---|
| Talk Description | To encourage new contributors, I will share my humble experience working on a GNOME circle app, Chess Clock |
| Author(s) Bio | Mariko graduated from Masaryk university in Czech Republic and now works as a patent attorney in Japan. She likes to program in Python. |
| Pronouns | she/her/hers |
| Where are you located? | Japan |
| Do you need travel sponsorship from GNOME Foundation in order to join our event? | No |