Finding where to start contributing to Nimbus

[IonianPlayboy]

How to check the files that need to be updated

There is a lot of files in Nimbus that still mention Elk or Mastodon. Checking them out can be a good way to look for a place you can contribute to.

Running grep

Note

grep is a command-line utility for searching plaintext datasets for lines that match a regular expression. (from Wikipedia)

It is available on Linux and MacOS, but not on Windows as far as I know. If you want an equivalent, I think you should be able to do something similar with findstr.

Using grep in Nimbus's root folder, we can look for all mentions of "elk" and "masto" to see what files need to be updated.

For "elk" mentions

grep --exclude={README.md,pnpm-lock.yaml,package.json}  --exclude-dir={node_modules,.nuxt} -rnw '.' -e "elk"  

For "masto" mentions

grep --exclude={README.md,pnpm-lock.yaml,package.json}  --exclude-dir={node_modules,.nuxt} -rnw '.' -e "masto"  

Output

Here is an example of the output of the grepcommand looking for "elk" mentions, reduced to only two files for brevity:

./netlify.toml:7:from = "https://chat.elk.zone"
./service-worker/notification.ts:2:import { closeDatabases, get } from '../utils/elk-idb'
./service-worker/notification.ts:5:  const users = await get<UserLogin[]>('elk-users')

What we can learn from reading this log :

• netlify.toml mentions "elk" once
  • It seems like a simple link that can be easily updated to https://chat.nimbus.town without too much trouble
• service-worker/notification.ts mentions "elk" twice, once on line 2, and the other on line 5
  • The first mention is an import from ../utils/elk-idb, which looks like some kind of logic that is deeply coupled with Elk/Mastodon
  • Maybe that's not the best one to focus on for an easy contribution

=> I can make a quick PR to update netlify.toml to help out.

Note

There is an issue that has listed all the files that need to be updated : #6
Keep in mind that it is not guaranteed to be up to date.