Re: Seeking guidance on starting FreeBSD contribution

Hello Ananay,

Maintaining some ports is a pretty typical way to start contributing. 
You can start by reading the porter's handbook:

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/porters-handbook/

Then either create a new port, or take over something already in the 
ports tree with MAINTAINER=ports@FreeBSD.org.  Typically one would open 
a PR at https://www.freebsd.org/support/bugreports/ to update the port 
and offer to take maintainership at the same time.

If you want to use FreeBSD more regularly, you can use 
sysutils/desktop-installer to quickly configure a fully functional 
desktop or laptop system.

https://github.com/outpaddling/desktop-installer

Cheers,

	Jason

On 9/14/25 18:10, Ananay Sharma wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I’m Ananay Sharma, a 2nd-year undergraduate student in Computer Science. 
> For the past few months, I have been learning how computer systems work 
> and studying Operating Systems through the UCB OS lectures. I found 
> FreeBSD fascinating and would really love to contribute to it in the future.
> 
> However, I don’t use FreeBSD regularly and I’m not sure where to start 
> or how its components work in practice. I would greatly appreciate any 
> advice on how to begin learning about FreeBSD development or how to get 
> involved with small contributions.
> 
> Thank you very much for your time.
> 
> Best regards,
> Ananay Sharma
> 



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