Contributing to the Open Source Giants: Jenkins & Kubernetes
This past week marked a milestone in my journey as a software engineer: I submitted my very first pull requests to two of the most influential open source projects in the DevOps ecosystem — Jenkins and Kubernetes.
Anyone who knows me understands that tech is more than just a passion — it’s a full-blown obsession. I live and breathe code, constantly learning, breaking things, and rebuilding better. As someone deeply interested in Cloud Engineering and DevOps, contributing to these foundational tools has always been on my personal roadmap.
Why Open Source?
I believe open source is where innovation happens. It’s where developers can collaborate globally, learn from the best, and give back to the community that taught us so much. Contributing felt like the next logical (and emotional) step in my growth — a chance to participate, not just consume.
What I Worked On
In this post, I’ll break down what I contributed to each project, the problems I tackled, and the process behind each PR:
🔧 Jenkins Contribution
In the Jenkins project, I contributed a small but meaningful fix to clean up deprecated code usage. Specifically, I replaced a deprecated use of AtomicFileWriter with the modern equivalent. This kind of work is vital for long-term code health and maintenance, especially in projects with a long history and large install base like Jenkins.
The change helped address a deprecation warning in the codebase, promoting better compliance with current API best practices. I carefully tested the update to ensure no regressions and followed the community’s contribution guidelines.
☸️ Kubernetes Contribution
With Kubernetes, I began by contributing to the contributor-playground — a repository meant to help new contributors get familiar with the contribution process.
I signed the Contributor License Agreement (CLA) as an individual and submitted a basic PR to test the waters. While this isn’t production code, it’s the essential first step in getting involved with Kubernetes’ massive, highly structured ecosystem. I familiarized myself with the workflow, the DCO (Developer Certificate of Origin), CI checks, and the review process — all foundational skills for deeper contributions in the future.
Reflections
Whether or not these PRs get merged, I’m proud to have taken this step. It’s a small contribution in the grand scheme of these massive ecosystems, but a giant leap in my journey as a DevOps and cloud enthusiast. The review process itself was already a learning experience, and I’m excited to keep going.
Stay tuned — I’ll be sharing more technical deep-dives and learnings from this experience soon.
#DevOps #CloudEngineering #OpenSource #Jenkins #Kubernetes #FirstPR #GCP #ContinuousLearning