Joining in

The Hackathon is a virtual event open to anyone who is interested in contributing code, documentation, translations, UX designs and more to GitLab. Prizes are awarded to participants for having Merge Requests (MRs) merged and there may also be special award categories at each Hackathon.

To get started:

  1. Block the dates on your calendar!
  2. Check out the Contribute page.
  3. Check out the list of suggested issues for this Hackathon.
  4. If you have decided to work on an issue, it helps if you leave a comment. That way it's less likely for multiple people to be working on the same issue.
  5. Join the tutorial sessions
  6. Share the MRs you are working on, get help or help others. Join the party at the contributors channel.

Hackathon Prizes

We are excited to offer the following categories of prizes for this Hackathon:

All qualifying MRs must be submitted on March 31st & April 1st in your local timezone and be merged by April 15th at 23:00 UTC.

Categories Eligibility Prizes Description
Grand Prize Individual(s) with the most MRs merged Grand prize $100 to spend at the GitLab store
Second Place Individual(s) with the second most MRs merged Second prize Duffle Bag
Merged MR Everyone with an MR merged Merged MRs Laptop sleeve

All qualifying MRs must be submitted on March 31st & April 1st in your local timezone and be merged by April 15th at 23:00 UTC.

Previous Hackathon Tutorial 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
January 6th 09:00 - 09:45 Hackathon Kickoff Zoom link Presentation Christos Bacharakis (@cbacharakis), Dave Planella (@dplanella), Core Team
January 6th 14:00 - 14:50 Runner office hour (Runner office hour issue) Zoom link Darren Eastman (@DarrenEastman), Eliott Rushton (@erushton), Steve Azzopardi (@steveazz), Tomasz Maczukin (@tmaczukin)
January 6th 15:00 - 15:50 Release Stage tutorial Zoom link Presentation Orit Golowinski (@ogolowinski)
January 6th 16:00 - 16:50 Package group office hour (Package office hour issue) Zoom link Tim Rizzi (@trizzi)
January 6th 17:00 - 17:30 Migrating GitLab Pajamas components (Pajamas components migration issue) Zoom link Presentation Jeremy Elder (@jeldergl), Sam Beckham (@samdbeckham)
January 7th 22:00 - 22:30 Hackathon wrap-up Zoom link Presentation 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!

Missed the last Hackathon?

If you missed the previous Hackathon, you still have an opportunity to contribute for a prize. You can start by searching for priority issues with the label Community challenge as you can see in this query. For the next several months, anyone who works on these issues and have an MR merged will receive a GitLab-branded cannister for your coffee beans or tea leaves (photo below).

Challenge canister

Past events

To learn more about previous Hackathon events, visit the past GitLab Hackathons page.

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. Which GitLab projects qualify for the Hackathon?

    While we generally encourage contribution to the GitLab project, MRs for any project under the gitlab-org group, Meltano, 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.

  1. What are the key dates for the current Hackathon?