Ranked by how they treat first pull requests
The most beginner-friendly C++ open source projects
Projects that merge pull requests from outside contributors and answer them quickly: the two things a newcomer cannot see before sending one.
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1. freebsd/kyua C++
Port/Package build and test system
100% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
1 open beginner issue 175 stars
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Vulkan Validation Layers (VVL)
93% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
1 open beginner issue 1,037 stars
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3. clementine-player/Clementine C++
:tangerine: Clementine Music Player
98% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
1 open beginner issue 4,255 stars
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A ROS2 wrapper around Linux SocketCAN
94% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
1 open beginner issue 196 stars
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5. shedskin/shedskin C++
Shed Skin is a restricted-Python-to-C++ transpiler. Read the introduction below to learn about the restrictions.
95% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
3 open beginner issues 1,009 stars
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6. ros2/examples C++
Example packages for ROS 2
90% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
1 open beginner issue 970 stars
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7. gbdev/rgbds C++
Rednex Game Boy Development System - An assembly toolchain for the Nintendo Game Boy and Game Boy Color
91% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
1 open beginner issue 1,655 stars
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8. apache/tvm-ffi C++
Open ABI and FFI for Machine Learning Systems
97% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
1 open beginner issue 463 stars
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9. conan-io/docs C++
conan.io reStructuredText documentation
86% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
9 open beginner issues 125 stars
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10. bkaradzic/bgfx C++
Cross-platform, graphics API agnostic, "Bring Your Own Engine/Framework" style rendering library.
85% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
1 open beginner issue 17,527 stars
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11. boostorg/graph C++
Boost.org graph module
91% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
2 open beginner issues 396 stars
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12. MrNeRF/LichtFeld-Studio C++
Train, inspect, edit, automate, and export 3D Gaussian Splatting scenes from a single native application.
82% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
4 open beginner issues 3,766 stars
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13. Globulation2/glob2 C++
A real time strategy game that aims to remove all micro management
83% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
2 open beginner issues 48 stars
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14. tile-ai/tilelang-mlir-ascend C++
MLIR-based TileLang Ascend Adapter
79% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
2 open beginner issues 27 stars
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15. gazebosim/gz-physics C++
Abstract physics interface designed to support simulation and rapid development of robot applications.
83% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
4 open beginner issues 93 stars
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16. cataclysmbn/Cataclysm-BN C++
Cataclysm: Bright Nights: A fork/variant of Cataclysm:DDA by CleverRaven with a mod registry at https://mods.cataclysmbn.org/
79% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
3 open beginner issues 1,229 stars
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17. esbmc/esbmc C++
The efficient SMT-based context-bounded model checker (ESBMC)
92% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
3 open beginner issues 523 stars
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18. uNetworking/uWebSockets.js C++
μWebSockets for Node.js back-ends :metal:
76% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
1 open beginner issue 9,163 stars
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19. alibaba/MNN C++
MNN: A blazing-fast, lightweight inference engine battle-tested by Alibaba, powering high-performance on-device LLMs and Edge AI.
71% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
1 open beginner issue 16,158 stars
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20. wesnoth/wesnoth C++
An open source, turn-based strategy game with a high fantasy theme.
77% of outside PRs merged Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
8 open beginner issues 6,884 stars
How this ranking works
Score = merge rate × reply speed. The merge rate is the share of pull requests from outside contributors (anyone who is not an owner, member or collaborator of the project, bots excluded) merged in the last 30 days, smoothed as (merged + 1) ÷ (sent + 2) so a few lucky merges do not outrank a long record. The reply speed is 1 ÷ (1 + the median number of days before a pull request gets its first reply from someone other than its author, or is merged). Bot comments do not count as replies.
Listed: projects with at least 10 outside pull requests in that window, at least one open beginner issue, at least 10 stars, a push in the last 180 days, not archived, and measured in the last 30 days.