Lucide

For the last couple of weeks, I along with my group have been diligently working on contributing to Lucide an open source icon toolkit. Although, our progress has been slow, I feel we have succeeded in finding our rhythm as a group and on developing new ideas on how best to advance this project.

Current Progress

So far we have focused on creating points of contact with the community and establishing ourselves as a group that is interested in further development. One way we have done that is by creating new icons by making svg files. This has been more of a struggle than expected as it involves a fair bit of both math and creativity but we have been able to make some beautiful icons:

  <svg
  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
  width="24"
  height="24"
  viewBox="0 0 24 24"
  fill="none"
  stroke="currentColor"
  stroke-width="2"
  stroke-linecap="round"
  stroke-linejoin="round"
  >
  <path d="m10.09 22.5-.95-7.64a2.87 2.87 0 0 0-5.73 0l2.86 7.64h11.46l2.86-7.64a2.87 
  2.87 0 0 0-5.73 0l-.95 7.64" />
  <path d="M10.09 4.36h.26" />
  <path d="M13.91 4.36h-.26a3.82 3.82 0 0 1 3.82 3.82" />
  <path d="M14.81 15.46a4 4 0 0 0 0-.59 1 1 0 0 0-5.72 0 4 4 0 0 0 0 .59h0" />
  <path d="M17.73 8.18v.17a2.86 2.86 0 0 1 1.91 2.7V13" />
  <path d="M4.36 13v-1.9a2.86 2.86 0 0 1 1.91-2.7A3.82 3.82 0 0 1 10 4.18" />
  <circle cx="12" cy="3.41" r="1.91" />
</svg>

Created by me translates to:

Cupcake!

In order to maintain contact we have also emailed the creator and are soon hoping to get a response. We felt that this was a good way to introduce ourselves and not seem too intrusive.

Personal Code Contributions

As for my personal code based contributions to the project, I noticed that there was a missing image on their github repo website due to not a broken link but a width issue. I was able to open an issue, then once I received permission I opened a Pull Request which was then merged into the code base.

As for my next code bug based issue I noticed while perusing their website that when I clicked on a package supported by Lucide I was being redirected at an undefined package resulting in a 404. I created an issue and awaited more feedback as it did not seem as simple as a broken link. This was interesting because it got a bit more traction than some of my previous issues as some could recreate the issue while others could not. From there, I looked at previous commits as it seemed recent. I saw how there was a lot of changed files and using that and a very helpful comment, I could focus on a specific file:

docs/.vitepress/theme/components/packages/PackageList.data.ts

where the names of packages where being pulled from the wrong place. After getting familiar with the relevant code and the testing/development environment I was able to open a Pull Request that was then approved. The most interesting part of this for me was despite how the fix was so simple, how time-consuming it is to identify exactly where the problem was coming from. Sometimes playing around seems wasteful but it really aids the learning process.

Diff

Future Ideas and developments

We have discussed several ideas for future contributions and so far plan to:

• Create a few new icons
• Extend the project to a new framework
• Reduce redundant categories on website
• Continue to fix open issues
• Add guide to Lucide Studio on Docs

Presentation

I wanted to briefly comment on the presentation given by Shivam Balikondwar. Balikondwar, as a grad student at NYU Courant, added a refreshing take on open source development. I enjoyed his presentation as its always interesting to hear from those who starting contributing in the last few years as their experience differs from those who have long-term experience. He spoke about his time contributing to FireFox, Chromium, Linux, etc. I thought that his background in Engineering rather than Computer Science was a boon to his contributions as I noticed he was focused on what seemed to be backend focused contributions although he is a full-stack developer. I appreciate him coming to us and especially how he mentioned a few companies that might have opportunities available.