As a computer science student dipping my toes into open source, I recently landed a pull request in the High Energy Physics Software Foundation (HSF) repository titled "fix: ignore generated docs in eslint".
The issue was small but frustrating: every time our build scripts generated fresh documentation, ESLint scanned those auto-generated files. Because machine-generated code doesn't always follow human code styles, it triggered false positives and clogged up the CI pipeline. My PR updated the repository's ESLint configuration to ignore the docs/generated/ folder entirely.
The code review was a fantastic learning experience! A maintainer named Alex left a super friendly comment on my PR: "Great catch! Thanks for picking this up. Quick question—should we also add the build output directory to .eslintignore while we're at it?" I checked the existing setup, realized the build output was already covered elsewhere, and posted a quick explanation. Alex threw a thumbs-up emoji on my comment and hit "Merge."
This contribution taught me that open source isn't just about implementing massive new features; workflow improvements matter just as much. I learned a lot about how ESLint integrates into CI/CD pipelines and gained a huge boost in confidence. I’m definitely excited to tackle a bigger issue for HSF next!