If you are reading this blog post sequentially along with my previous posts then you would realize that the level of confidence in my tone has improved, I have gotten to half of my internship period and it has been super exciting for me. Contributing to opensource used to be a dream on the moon for me but with the help of Outreachy and the amazing mentors at the Debian project I already started living my dream 😁
So, the original goal of my internship was to learn the rudiments of contributing to the Debian Project and to create a yarn plugin to resolve node modules installed via apt in Debian systems. So far I have been able to successfully package new software and update old packages according to Debian standards and with existing tools. Concerning the plugin, I have been able to set up a working scaffolding that I would be using to build the entire plugin. Though some project goals appeared to be deliberately at war with me when I started out, with the help of my mentors, the Debian community, my fellow intern, and some digging around I was able to win those wars 😁 One of such was when I was to package a very small piece of software, and at a point, everything looked impossible because all the possible options I tried out failed, only for my mentors to provide me with the required help from more advanced resources than I have been previously exposed to. Now, if I am to start the project over from the beginning I would first take out time to read all the loads of documentation available that has to do with packaging and ensure that I properly understand them before even setting out to do any actual work.
For the second half of the internship, having understood what is expected of me concerning the plugin I am to build, I will be taking my time to build and test the plugin and continue with packaging and updating packages as required by the community. I will also network and work on getting myself properly engrafted into the Debian community so that I would be relevant to the community even beyond my internship.