[13ren]

Regarding interesting open source projects, can anyone recommend an open source project that contributing to would teach me about real-life, effective usage of:

(1). git source control

(2). maintaining a medium sized/complexity Java project

I'm interested in the oral tradition i.e. the human operational aspects of how you use it, what aspect to use it in what circumstances etc, etc, etc - that aren't in the tool itself or its man pages or tutorials. Thanks for any pointers.

[DougBTX]

I can't recommend a particular project, but looking through [1] for something which catches your eye would be a good start.

[1] http://github.com/search?q=java

[13ren]

thanks for that

[compay]

Whatever it is, start small. Smaller patches can be very useful and are also more likely to give you the satisfaction of being accepted. Even just correcting typos or grammar in a README can be useful as long as you're not a jerk about how you submit it to the original author. :-)

Github definitely makes contributing to open source very easy, so I'd recommend you start looking there. They also have some well-written practical guides to working with Git here:

http://github.com/guides