Getting Started Contributing to Devtron

Hey everyone, welcome to yet another interesting topic from the Devtron ecosystem, and today we'll be talking about how anyone can get started contributing to the Devtron community. We will discuss some of the ways in which you can get involved right now and kickstart your open source journey with us!

Let's quickly have a look at the topics we will cover in this blog post:

• About Devtron (An Overview)
• Ways to Contribute
• Documentation
• Community Helm Charts
• Docker Templates
• Devtron as a tool
• Content Creation and Creatives
• Hacktoberfest X Devtron

About Devtron

Before directly going over through the ways in which you can get involved, it's always helpful to get an overview of what the project or the tool is all about, and in this case Devtron.

So, in the most basic terms, Devtron is a tool integration platform for Kubernetes.
Often to improve the use of Kubernetes, we employ several tools. Using these tools at the same time, however, is cumbersome and complex. This is because these tools do not communicate with one another to manage different aspects of the application lifecycle, such as CI, CD, security, cost, observability, and stabilization.

Devtron is an open source, one-stop solution for the software delivery lifecycle of applications over Kubernetes.

Some of the main features of Devtron

• End-to-End solution to all the DevOps Challenges:
  As mentioned above as well, employing several tools with Kubernetes can be cumbersome and a complex task. Devtron provides a seamless and a uniform interface, that can be integrated with both open-source and commercial tools across the entire lifecycle.
  Another interesting feature is the in-built GitOps functionalities that can be easily configured with just a single-click, without much hassle and complexity.
• Low/no knowledge of Kubernetes required:
  Traditionally, in order to integrate several tools with Kubernetes one would need to be familiar with some of the complex Kubernetes concepts such as networking, setting up Cluster IPs etc., plus manually configuring all these takes a lot of time and efforts.
  Devtron caters to this problem by providing a uniform and user-friendly dashboard to manage your Kubernetes applications and integrations, so you don't have to worry about setting things up entirely from scratch. Even someone having just the basic knowledge of Kubernetes would easily be able to manage, deploy and scale their applications without any difficulties.
• In-built DevSecOps (Security):
  Devtron has in-built security features. Multi-level security policies at global, cluster, environment, and application-level can be configured within the debug dashboard itself, for efficient hierarchical policy management. To know more about Security, have a look at the documentation.
• Easy and Centralized Access Management:
  Again, Devtron provides you an Application Debugging Dashboard which helps you easily manage your applications seamlessly and without any hassle.
  Try out the dashboard here.
• 100 % Open Source:
  We believe in the power of Open Source Software and the impact it creates in the ecosystem. Taking inspiration of these principles, the Devtron ecosystem is 100% open sourced and available for anyone to use, contribute, which makes it more accessible to the global community out there!

Ways to Contribute

Now we are familiar with Devtron and the problems it addresses. Let us dive into the ways in which you can get involved and start contributing to the Devtron ecosystem.

• Documentation
  One of the most beginner-friendly ways to contribute to any open source out there is the Documentation. This is the first thing one refers in order to understand about a particular tool, how to set that up locally and much more.
  Now, how you can contribute to the docs?
  Let's say you have a feature in mind that isn't mentioned in the documentation, or you noticed a bug/typo while going over through it. Feel free to open an issue/PR discussing your ideas to improve the docs and make it more accessible and beginner-friendly.
  Check out Devtron's official documentation.
• Community Helm Charts
  Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes. It helps you manage Kubernetes applications in the most efficient way possible. Now, a Chart is basically a Helm package. It contains all the resource definitions necessary to run an application, tool, or service inside a Kubernetes cluster.
  At Devtron, we use a lot of different kinds of helm charts to deploy and build pipelines for the applications.
  
  With an initiative called as "Bring your own Chart", we invite the community out there to contribute their own helm charts which would soon be included in an upcoming feature in the Charts section of our docs, called as Community Charts.
  To know more about this initiative, have a look here
• Docker Templates
  We at Devtron are building a collection of readily available Dockerfile templates for different languages and frameworks which can be used for further containerizing the application and deploy it in production environment.
  You are most welcome to contribute a sample Dockerfile template for the languages or frameworks that you may be familiar with and which has not been included yet.
  
  Just having some basic knowledge of creating custom Dockerfiles and familiarity with a language/framework, and you'll be on your way on making a very valid contribution to this collection.
  Visit the GitHub repo to know more about how to contribute.
• Devtron as a tool
  One can also directly contribute to the Devtron tool itself. The very first way to approach this would be setting up Devtron in your local system - this section of the documentation would prove to be helpful here. It's always recommended to get your hands-dirty and try to familiarize yourself with the project before directly jumping onto the contributions.
  
  Once you have some background knowledge about what Devtron does, you may start by picking up some beginner-friendly or good-first-issues and work your way up from there.
  
  The main technologies used to build Devtron are Golang, Kubernetes, Argo CD/CD, Grafana etc. Having some previous knowledge of these would definitely be helpful, but shouldn't prove to be a barrier for you in learning these on-the-go while contributing.
  We are always here to help and guide you all, so feel free to discuss your doubts and reach out to the maintainers of our discord server.
• Content Creation and Creatives
  Calling out all the technical writers and artists out there. We invite you all to share your learnings related to Devtron, Kubernetes, Helm etc., in-terms of blogs, Twitter threads, LinkedIn posts and even amazing visual diagrams.
  We have a dedicated page on medium.com for highlighting your content and stories. Feel free to have a look here. This is again an efficient way to learn and share your amazing work in public, plus helping the community grow with you as well, so a win-win scenario. 🎉
  
  To know more about the blogs written by our team members at Devtron, you can visit the official blog page.
  So, what are you waiting for? Wear your creatives hats and let's share our learnings with the community!

Hacktoberfest X Devtron

This year, Devtron is honoured to partner with Hacktoberfest to celebrate open source with the community all across the globe. Being an open-source platform, we welcome Developers, DevOps Practitioners, Technical Writers, Designers and everyone else with all experiences to give their fair shot at contributing and helping our open-source projects.

A month-long celebration like Hacktoberfest can't go away without goodies. We recognize all your efforts for contributions and would like to honour your work by providing some awesome swags and giveaways from our end, apart from Hacktoberfest.
This year, we have a lot of events planned to make your Hacktoberfest experience a memorable one! Some of the events that are planned out throughout the month of October are:

• Micro-Blogathon
• Hunt-a-Bug
• Art-a-Thon
• HackDiaries

Interested to learn more and get involved?
Checkout our official Hacktoberfest GitHub Repository to know more about these events and getting involved with the Devtron Community, this Hacktoberfest.

I recently did a live-stream on this particular topic, and we had a very detailed discussion on each point mentioned above. Make sure to check it out on Devtron's YouTube channel.

Feel free to join our discord server, where all the fun will be happening.

We look forward to having you all celebrat21e this month with us and hope we are able to kickstart your journey into the Open Source ecosystem!