One day while going through one of the many dev newsletters I subscribe to, I came across a color palette generator.
I used it to generate a palette for my ongoing project. At that moment, it had no copy or export button. To get the colors, you had to copy each one manually.
I checked the GitHub repo. The export colors feature was planned, but not implemented yet. I figured I’d try adding it myself.
Adding the copy colors feature
First PR
I forked the repository and started working on the feature.
After finishing the changes, I tested them locally, and everything worked. So I raised a PR.
During the review, Francis (the creator) pointed out that I had unintentionally replaced an existing feature. I had meant to add a new button but ended up overwriting the old one.
So instead of guessing, I asked how he had envisioned it. Based on his feedback, I updated the PR, and it was merged soon after.
Missing bundle
Later, when I checked, the copy button wasn’t working on the deployed site.
I realised that I hadn’t added bundle.js to my commit. It still worked locally because the file was already present in my working directory.
I raised another PR to fix that, and this time, everything worked as expected.
Learnings
This showed me how useful open source can be. People can contribute, collaborate, and improve things for everyone.
I also learned that just testing things locally isn’t enough. It’s better to test in a setup that’s closer to production.