How to Enter the OpenShift Console Customization Competition

In case you have not heard (we do not blame you if you have not), the OpenShift Developer tools team is holding a competition to see who can produce the most unique and creative customizations to the console using any of the supported mechanisms. The potential options were expanded, thanks to the recent release of OpenShift 4.6, which enabled additional opportunities for console customization. In addition, not only do submitters have the chance to win great prizes just for entering, they also have the opportunity to appear on openshift.tv and show their creations to the world!

What Are the Details?

Glad you asked. Here is an overview of the competition:

Dates:

Competition Start: October 13, 11:59PM PST

Competition End: November 29, 11:59PM PST

Entry:

Registration must be completed by submitting this form.

Once the form is submitted, you will receive an email with further instructions.

Submission:

Like most collaborations in the Open Source Community, entries to the competition are facilitated through the use of pull request to this repository:

https://github.com/redhat-developer/openshift-web-console-customizations

Unfamiliar with the pull request process or want more information? Do not fret, a complete walkthrough will be covered later on in this post.

Prizes!

• By just registering for the competition, you will receive a certificate of participation.
• The first 20 entries who complete an entry through a pull request submission receive a T-shirt.
• Top three winners will receive an OpenShift sweatshirt.

Additional Information

The full list of guidelines can be found here.

What if I Don't Have a Good Idea?

That is OK! As emphasized by the spirit of the Open Source community, participation alone can reap generous rewards. For example, by just registering, you will receive a certificate of participation. And once a pull request submission has been completed, if you are one of the first 20 entries, you will get a wicked awesome T-shirt!

Even if you cannot think of a feature offhand, check out any of the existing submissions, which can be used as inspiration for the types of customizations of your own!

Walk Me Through the Entire Process

Completing a submission to the OpenShift Console Competition is easy as 1-2-3 (and maybe a few extra numbers).

1. Complete the registration form.
2. Wait patiently for the email response from the Developer Tools team confirming your registration titled “Registration confirmed for the OpenShift 4 Console Customization contest.”
3. Develop your customization.
4. Submit a pull request

Fill in all of the required fields.

First, review the official OpenShift documentation for the various supported methods for customizing the web console.

With an understanding of the options available, the easiest way to implement a customization is to develop it against an actual OpenShift environment. There are multiple ways that you can get your hands on an OpenShift environment whether it be on your local machine, a cloud provider, or in your datacenter. Head over to try.openshift.com for all of the information.

Develop, design, test, rinse, repeat, bang head, celebrate (in that order).

Once you are satisfied that you have designed the greatest customization ever developed, the next step is to submit a pull request against the console customization GitHub repository.

Don’t have a GitHub account? You can sign up here.

Next, navigate to the console customization GitHub repository.

As this section would indicate, all submissions for the console competition will be facilitated through the pull request process. But what exactly does this entail and are there any particular requirements? Fortunately, all of these details can be reviewed when starting the pull request process. However, they can be found below for which we can use as a guide to ensure that we complete all of the required steps are completed.

Since we need to make a contribution to the repository, we will need to fork the repository. Forking the repository can be facilitated by clicking the Fork button at the top right-hand corner of the repository.

With the repository forked, click on the green Code button, and grab the URL (in either HTTPS or SSH form) that you can use to clone the source code locally to your machine.

While there are several alternate methods and tools that can be used to interact with the repository, let's walk through interacting with the repository using the Git command line tool.

First clone the repository locally and change into the directory containing the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/<forked_repository>/openshift-web-console-customizations.git
$ cd openshift-web-console-customizations

All entries will be placed within the competition directory, and each entry will be included in a directory following the format <github_username>-<enhancement_name>. For example, if our GitHub username was jdoe and our enhancement featured a custom logo to the login page, the folder name could take the form jdoe-login-page-logo.

Inside this directory, you are required to provide the following:

• A README.md file that provides an overview of your enhancement and how it should be tested in an OpenShift environment.
• The assets related to your enhancement

Create a new branch that will be used to contain your assets. For example, to create a branch called competition-entry, execute the following command:

$ git checkout -b competition-entry

Assemble the required assets, and when you a ready to commit the files and folders, add the files to the staging area and commit the changes along with a friendly message describing the additions to the repository similar to the following:

$ git -a -m “<github_username> competition entry”

Push the changes to GitHub:

$ git push origin competition-entry

If a branch name other than competition-entry was used, be sure to substitute as appropriate.

Navigate back to the GitHub repository, and you will be greeted with a banner displaying the branch that you just pushed along with the option to create a pull request. Click the “Compare and pull request” button.

On the pull request submission page, you will be presented with the set of guidelines that we saw previously. Review the checklist and fill out a [x] next to each empty checkbox to confirm that you have completed each of the required tasks.

Click the Create Pull Request button to finish creating the pull request.

That’s it! Your entry has been submitted! Sit back and wait to hear further information on the status of the entry from the OpenShift developer tools team. Keep in mind that you are not limited to submitting a single entry, and multiple entries are welcome.

The OpenShift web console competition is a fun way to not only express your own individual creativity, but highlight how you and others can use the console more effectively.

Still have questions or want to discuss your idea further? Join in on the discussion in the #openshift-dev channel on Kubernetes Slack.

One final reminder: Submissions will be accepted up until the evening of November 29 PST, and be sure to watch the finalists live on OpenShift TV on Tuesday, December 1.