Joining in
Important information: you need to RSVP at our meetup.com event for having your MRs count towards the prizes.
The Hackathon is a virtual event open to anyone who is interested in contributing code, translations, UX designs and more to GitLab. By participating in GitLab's Hackathon, you have the opportunity to work on issues that matter to you and advance your skills/experience while joining a global, diverse and inclusive team of contributors and GitLab team members. Documentation hackathons are conducted separately two times per year.
For this Hackathon, we are introducing the following contribution areas: Website, Security, Front-end, Back-end. Prizes are awarded to participants for having Merge Requests (MRs) merged that contribute to the issues/epics linked below on each contribution area.
To get started:
Prior the Hackathon
- Block the dates on your calendar, or subscribe to the GitLab Developer Evangelism calendar that includes the Hackathon dates and calls.
- RSVP at our meetup.com event for having your MRs counted towards the prizes
- Identify an issue (or more) and leave a comment indicating your interest in working on this/these. That way it's less likely for multiple people to be working on the same issue.
During the Hackathon
- Join the sessions to find more about the hackathon or watch the recording that will be posted afterwards.
- In case you don't want to work on the issues described in the contribute area below:
- To get started with code, check out the curated list of issues to contribute to, based on the project you are interested in contributing to.
- Check out the Contribute page for additional ways of contributing. - Leave a comment on the issue(s) you are working on. For help, you can ask directly in the issue or at the contributors channel.
Issues/Epics to contribute to
Hackathon Prizes
We are excited to offer the following categories of prizes for this Hackathon per each contribution area.
All qualifying MRs must be submitted between November 29th 12:00 UTC & December 6th 12:00 UTC and be merged by January 6th at 23:00 UTC.
| Categories | Eligibility | Prizes | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grand Prize | Individual(s) with the most points gathered (awarded on each contribution area) |  |
A $100 giftcard for our swag shop |
| Second Place | Individual(s) with the second most points gathered (awarded on each contribution area) |  |
A Tanuki t-shirt and a Insulated Water Bottle! |
| Merged MR | Everyone with an MR merged |  |
A Tanuki t-shirt with our new logo on! |
Hackathon Tutorials & office hour sessions
Tutorial sessions during the Hackathon help you get kickstarted with contributing and to learn more about GitLab development. More sessions/speakers may be added as they are confirmed.
| Date |
Time in
UTC
(click for local time) |
Topic | Session | Speakers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 29th | 14:30 - 15:00, Add it to your calendar | Hackathon Kickoff - Learn all about our new Hackathon format, and get ready to start contributing | Zoom link to Join. | Christos Bacharakis (@cbacharakis) |
| December 1st | 14:30 - 15:00, Add it to your calendar | Office hour call - Discuss anything related to the Hackathon or GitLab in general | Zoom link to Join. | Christos Bacharakis (@cbacharakis) |
| December 6th | 14:30 - 15:00, Add it to your calendar | Hackathon Wrap-up call - The Hackathon is over, what's next?! | Zoom link to Join. | Christos Bacharakis (@cbacharakis) |
If you miss any of the sessions, you will find the recordings in the Hackathon Playlist.
Getting help
For communications during the Hackathon, we will use the GitLab Contributors room in Gitter. This is a channel for community-related discussions and for community members to help each other as people have questions when contributing to GitLab.
It's open to everyone, so please join us at the Contributors Gitter room or the Discord Community Server!
Hackathon Guidelines
Hackathon organizers and GitLab team members reserve the rights to:
1. not consider a merge request part of the hackathon if it's spam or could be part of a larger Merge Request, etc. If a GitLab team member decides to reject an MR, they should leave a comment informing the contributing and the thinking behind their decision.
2. to block and ban a user that is not following GitLab's Code of Conduct
3. block and ban a user that is using two or more accounts for participating in the Hackathon
Past events
To learn more about previous Hackathon events, visit the past GitLab Hackathons page.
Frequently Asked Questions
-
Which GitLab projects qualify for the Hackathon?
While we generally encourage contribution to the GitLab project, MRs for any project under the
gitlab-orggroup and www-gitlab-com qualify for the Hackathon. If you are in doubt about a project which is not on this list, please do ask us on the Contributors Gitter channel.
-
How are the points being calculated?
In a previous Hackathon (Q2 2021), we introduced a point system upon which the winners were decided. This worked well, so we're keen to continue with its adoption. However, for this Hackathon, points will be calculated per contribution area. As a result, we will have four leaderboards on each contribution area: Website, Security, Front-end, Back-end.
Specifically:
- 1 point for any MR merged that is not associated with an open/existing issue
- 2 points, for each MR merged that is associated/closing an open/existing issue
- 5 points, for each MR merged that is associated/closing one of the issues linked to in the Hackathon's main page
-
What are the key dates for the current Hackathon?
- November 29th 12:00 UTC & December 6th 12:00 UTC: all MRs must be submitted
- January 6th 23:00 UTC: all qualifying MRs must have been merged
-
My Merge Request has been merged. What's next?
After the 6th of January, the team will review all the qualifying MRs merged and reach out to contributors. Please expect an email by the 15th of January 2023.