True - what you should do is submit a fix that takes compiled code out of the repo and replaces it with a build script.
if she was editing the wrong files, the answer is to do a little more research before diving in.
That's not always as easy as it sounds if a codebase is large, uses non-standard build environments, violates best practices (like unnecessarily checking in generated files, and, if it's really necessary to do so, not making obvious that it's a generated file -- assuming it wasn't a simple oversight on Rachel's part), ...
In my opinion, pull requests should be submitted even if you're not sure they're exactly right as long as you've done a reasonable effort to make it so:
After all, familiarizing yourself with a codebase is done by working with it, and asking for help when you're stuck -- and that's exactly what a pull request is: a request for comments, where you show others what you've done so far. Of course you could have used the mailing list instead, but if there's this nice site available where you can publish your code, which keeps track of changes and provides a commenting and message system, why not make use of it?
hard to say without seeing the pull requests, but if you edit compiled code and call it a typo you're probably at risk of doing a lot of things wrong.
perhaps you just need to spend a little more time learning about a project before trying to push your changes. seems like all of the issues presented in the comic could have been avoided by paying more careful attention.