# Contributing to JupyterLab

*For a long time, I've been a lover of python. The language, the ecosystem, the projects, the conferences, and pretty much everything around it. However, the deeper I get into the ecosystem, the more I'm aware of the enormous amount of open source infrastructure that feeds it. One of the things I always wanted to do, was to contribute to an open source project.*

This post is about just that.

### The project: JupyterLab

I have used python for a wide range of project types, but data analysis and data science is [definitely a majority](https://profile-summary-for-github.com/user/duarteocarmo). I love using jupyter notebooks as an interactive playing field to solve a problem using data.

[JupyterLab](https://jupyterlab.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#) is the tool that (in my opinion) will succeed the traditional jupyter notebooks as a browser based IDE. I've been using JupyterLab as a tool in my work and free time, and even though I don't think it's totally ready for prime time, I really love it.

![JupyterLab](https://duarteocarmo.com/images/11/jupyterlab.png)

For me, JupyterLab is a big step up from the traditional jupyter notebook interface. It provides awesome features such as an integrated console, support for other file formats, exporting options, a more modern interface, and much more!

### How it happened

While working on a project for [Jabra](https://duarteocarmo.com/about/), I wanted to share some of my work internally. Other people in my org don´t necessarily have a way of reading `.ipynb` files (notebooks) or even python installed in their system. Therefore, I often need to to export my notebooks as `.html` files. But this time, I wanted to create a presentation.

However, after a long time looking into how to do that, I finally [found an issue that addressed it.](https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/issues/5018) After finding it, I commented:

![JupyterLab](https://duarteocarmo.com/images/11/issue.png)

I was instantly called out by one of the main contributors, asking if I would consider contributing to the project and opening a [pull request](https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-pull-requests) (PR).

And so my open source contribution journey began.

### Contributing

So my mission was to add a piece to the [documentation](https://jupyterlab.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#) of the project that explained how users can create a presentation from a jupyter notebook. I'm not going to go through all of the details of the process but I want to give a general overview.

The first step was to follow a couple of tutorials (for example [this](https://opensource.guide/how-to-contribute/) good one) on how I could create this "PR".

After reading up on it, I understood that the first step was to [fork](https://guides.github.com/activities/forking/) the JupyterLab repo. This allows you to have your own version of the repo, basically your own copy of the repo. After cloning [my copy of the repo](https://github.com/duarteocarmo/jupyterlab) to my local machine, I created a [branch](https://github.com/duarteocarmo/jupyterlab/tree/docs/exporting) where I would start creating the modifications.

The next step was to understand how I could possibly start changing the documentation of the project. Thankfully, JupyterLab has a [great guide](https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) on how to contribute to documentation.

I basically needed to create a `.rst` (restructured text) file where I explained how a user could export their notebook into a presentation. A `.rst` file is pretty similar to a markdown file that then gets rendered into an HTML page (using something called [sphinx](http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/)). Here is a screenshot of me editing the file and previewing my changes.

![JupyterLab](https://duarteocarmo.com/images/11/wip.png)

After adding all of the necessary documentation, I made sure that everything passed the tests described in the contribution guide. After that was done, I pushed all of my changes to my branch.

When you do that, GitHub will automatically suggest the creation of a pull request with a click of a button. And so I [created one](https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/6472):

![JupyterLab](https://duarteocarmo.com/images/11/pull-request.png)

Excited about it, I commented and mentioned the contributors that first asked me for the pull request, saying it was ready. After a bit of back and forth (and a couple of additions), it was finally [merged into the master branch](https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/commit/eafd1f972cd9dae27fd3087a252a22138516bf2f)! (Which means, it was published!)

### Result

For me, the biggest, most important result of all, was the fact that **I got to help in a project that is not only used by a wide range of people, but also by me!**

If you want to browse the part of the documentation I wrote, you can go to the ["Exporting notebooks" section of the official JupyterLab documentation](https://jupyterlab.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/export.html).

Here is a snippet of the page:

![JupyterLab](https://duarteocarmo.com/images/11/result-doc.png)

Oh, and I also got [a cool badge in my GitHub profile.](https://github.com/duarteocarmo) 😜