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I want to contribute to open source projects on Github. Mostly, I'd like to just start out fixing small bugs or adding features. I don't have a particular project in mind. I'd like to work on C, C++, Python, .NET, Java, etc projects. However, my problem is I can't figure out how to find anything on Github.

I did find a page on Explore Github, that lists C projects. Basically, it lists the top 5 "watched" C projects. OK, that's fine, but I want to see more than 5.

Sourceforge was/is great because you can browse projects by programming language. Also, SourceForge has or used to have a forum for finding projects that are asking for help. I can't find any of that on Github. There is a "Search" feature that, seems fairly useless for finding projects to contribute to. I tried the advanced search, setting it to "Repositories" and "C" for the programing language. However, you have to put something int he search; although I just want to browse titles and descriptions of projects.

So, I tried putting "network" just to see what comes up. It gives just a list of everybody's fork of every project there is.

Is there any way I can search, say through a third party or something, for projects in a sane way? It seems like Github should have such a thing; I would just choose from Sourceforge since I can search there, but I want to establish a Github profile, since that is the flavor of the month and there are all these fanboys on Hacker News that seem to think a Github profile is better than a Resume/CV. :)

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I usually find Github/Bitbucket/Google Code/Launchpad/Source Forge projects by using the libraries/apps/plugins that are on there, found by other means. Isn't it better to join a project that you're using yourself as the context is usually clearer on what needs to be done? – Spoike Feb 27 '12 at 15:50
I hear that, people always bring that up. However, I can't think of anything I use that regularly that is a) open source AND b) not very large project. Sure, I use Linux/vim/apache/firefox/etc but I'd like to just sift through and find some project, maybe click on the Issues list and just find a couple bugs I'd like to fix and work my through it. But you're method is a very good one; I just don't know what, in my landscape, I would do. – user9987789 Feb 27 '12 at 18:51
This is off-topic to the question but might I suggest that you could look up any libraries or plugins for Linux/vim/apache/firefox/etc, I'm pretty sure there are plenty (though I'd recon most of them aren't specifically on github). Or you could try and start up your own project as initializing a git repository isn't particularly hard. ;-) – Spoike Feb 28 '12 at 7:25
I don't mean to spam, but I've found this website very useful for this: codetriage.com (no, I'm not affiliated in any way with them.) – Florian Margaine Apr 2 at 15:03

2 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

If you search for language:csharp for instance using the box, it will show you all the csharp projects, and sort them by the number of watchers. No need to pick the language in the dropdown, it will ignore that setting.

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Here is the link to the advanced search: github.com/search – Tim Krueger Feb 27 '12 at 13:45
Perfect, I think this is exactly what I'm looking for! – user9987789 Feb 27 '12 at 18:54
up vote 2 down vote

this is kind of an old question, but there is a new site that's trying to help people like you to find projects to contribute to, you can check it out at: www.lookingforpullrequests.com

Hope that you're still interested and you find this site useful. :)

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