As the wasmCloud community digs into our Q3 roadmap, now is the perfect time to get involved with the project. Whether you're a veteran wasmCloud user or brand new to the Wasm ecosystem, there are tons of opportunities for folks of all experience levels to contribute to everything from the platform to documentation to the next generation of the wash CLI.

Ready to pitch in? Here are some of our current good first issues for new contributors, drawn from across several repos:

• wasmCloud/wasmCloud: The monorepo for all development on wasmCloud itself
• wasmCloud/wash: The dedicated repo for Wasm Shell, the next generation of the wash CLI
• wasmCloud/wasmcloud.com: The project website and documentation
• wasmCloud/go: wasmCloud Go ecosystem libraries and tooling
• wasmCloud/typescript: wasmCloud TypeScript ecosystem libraries and tooling

wasmCloud/wasmCloud: Standardize image reference field names​

Across the project, we use a variety of different names for image references, including but not limited to:

• provider_ref
• image_ref
• component_ref

This issue proposes that we name these image_reference everywhere. Since we depend on the variously-named fields in other places, this effort will need to add a new field and deprecate the old ones. See the issue for more information.

wasmCloud/wash: Add validate subcommand to config command​

The next generation of the wash CLI is coming, streamlined and aiming to be a simple, streamlined, and powerful tool for general Wasm development. There are a lot of good first issues if you want to pitch in, but we'll highlight a few here, starting with the extension of a few wash commands.

Ideally, the wash config command would include a validate subcommand to help users verify that their configuration files are correctly formatted and contain valid values. See the issue for more information and help bring it to life.

wasmCloud/wash: Add cleanup subcommand to config command​

The wash config command could also use a cleanup subcommand to help users clean up wash-related directories and cached data when appropriate. Like the above issue, this is a good opportunity for Rustaceans and CLI enthusiasts. Check out the issue for more information.

wasmCloud/wash: Improve artifact detection after custom build commands​

When you build a Wasm component with Wasm Shell using a custom build command, the CLI looks for the generated artifact in a handful of hard-coded, standard locations for popular languages that compile to Wasm. But this is a relatively brittle approach that could do with some hardening in order to handle a wider array of build patterns.

Check out the issue for more information. And make sure to take a look at the rest of the good first issues for wash—there are many, many ways to contribute.

wasmCloud/wasmcloud.com: Implement reusable language tabs​

Documentation is a great place to make a first contribution, and this is a good opportunity for someone with frontend experience.

In the wasmCloud documentation, we often need to present instructions on the same task across multiple languages, given the polyglot nature of Wasm development. We use <Tabs> and <Tab> components to organize content according to language, but this requires maintaining the same id everywhere the components are used. This could be a lot smoother if we had dedicated, reusable components for each language, for example:

<LangTabs>
  <LangTab lang="rust">...</LangTab>
  <LangTab lang="go">...</LangTab>
  ...etc
</LangTabs>

Or even...

<LangTabs>
  <RustTab>...</RustTab>
  <GoTab>...</GoTab>
  ...etc
</LangTabs>

See the issue for more information.

wasmCloud/go: Create project documentation​

Several directories in the wasmCloud/go repository are missing proper documentation. Much of it, such as READMEs for the examples and templates directories, don't require deep expertise in wasmCloud or Go, but they could definitely use some TLC.

See the issue for more information!

wasmCloud/typescript: Create project documentation​

It's not just our Go ecosystem that could use some documentation help—the same is true over in our TypeScript repository, where we could use some help with READMEs and a contributing guide.

Check out the issue to contribute.

Conclusion​

As Brooks said in his look forward at the project's next steps, the community is the pillar of wasmCloud, and we're always thrilled to welcome new contributors. If you have questions or just want to chat Wasm, make sure to join the wasmCloud Slack and tune in to the next wasmCloud community meeting. Hope to see you there!