So, after spending some time pouring over some of the high-profile python projects on GitHub, I found a handful of populars and forked to look for bugs. It was successful!
I have 3 open pull requests in Bottle.py, twython, and foursquare- python. Bottle.py is a dead- simple micro-framework for python web applications, and one I've played with before. Twython is a pure-python wrapper for the Twitter API. Foursquare- python is a python module for interfacing with the Foursquare API. For twython and foursquare-python, I felt even my humble style-fixes would be welcome to such well-travelled codebases that are likely being used by many app developers. Bottle.py is one of those projects that really demonstrates the simplicity and elegance of python, while doing some powerful stuff under the hood. Having commits in bottle.py just feels good.
As I am not exactly a leetz0r, I chose some relatively low-hanging fruit in the realm of python style guide compliance, as per Python Enhancement Proposal #0008. Thanks to the power of a nifty utility called pep8 (available via easy_install, apt, and yum!) I was able to comb through large codebases to cherrypick the offending lines in each of these projects. Though these are not necessarily functional bugs, things like removing tabs from a file may avert future bugs, particularly in an example file. If someone were to copy and paste code from an example file with tab spacing in it, and then add their own code below and indent it properly using the standard 4-spaces, there would be errors.
Here are the Pull Requests I have that are still Open:
I had one other pull request in Bottle.py, but the upstream considers PEP8 "Just a guide" so closed it. Here is the bottle.py thread.
My good deed for the day is done, and so is my homework! I'll likely be experimenting with a bottle.py deployment on PythonAnywhere.com, on which I just got my private beta activation code today! Check me out soon at http://decause.pythonanywhere.com