How do you read source when working on OpenSource projects?

Question

open source

Friends, hello! I want to join some OpenSource project for the sake of learning, but I don’t know how to approach. Now, if you decide to join the project, how do you understand what you need to do? Let's say there are 100500 files. Do you read every "from and to"? Or is there some way to merge in fact, so to speak, into what is written there and start working?

Answer 1

I suspect that most open source contributors came simply by fixing a bug that was hindering them themselves, or by adding functionality they lacked to an application/library they use every day.

Answer 2

Somehow I installed a new version of samba (new at that time) and ... winbind constantly crashed in it :) Well, debug gdb in the teeth. The error was banal - an uninitialized variable, then a patch - and sending it to samba. It didn't occur to me to read everything in a row - I'm not a project architect :)
Something like this...

Answer 3

Reading all in one piece is a nightmare. Especially if the project has more than one file. Download, set up the environment, analyze the code as a structure (or download this skill if you don’t already know how).
The best way is to take a bug or task from their tracker and fix it.