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How To Turn Your Pile of Code Into an Open Source Project

Posted by Soulskill on from the learn-how-to-swear-at-people-on-mailing-lists dept.

Esther Schindler writes "You've written some code, you think it would be useful to the world, and you'd like to give back to the open source world. But how do you do it? Andy Lester provides a checksheet for developers for how to release an open source project and get it noticed. For instance: Before you release the project to the wild, write some documentation, create a mailing list, create an issue tracker, and so on. 'Users require releases of your software. It’s a disservice to your users to point at the Git repo and say “Just pull from the master branch and install it.” Users don’t want to have to use version control just to get a release of the code. Create a proper tarball (.tar.gz) that is easily downloadable by anyone. Announce each release. Your announcements should not assume that the reader is familiar with your project.' You think he's missing anything?"

2 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Compiled Windows Binaries by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Oh yeah, just let me download and build all these libraries your project requires... oh, what's that? One of the libraries requires Visual Studio 2003 Ersatzpress Edition to compile? And another one needs gcc-mingw-0.0.1-super-alpha-pre-release-dinosaur-version? Okay, let me just... get on that...

    If Windows binaries aren't provided, it means no one on the dev team could get them to build. (Maybe they can't figure out how to un-#pragma the #pragging #pragma correctly?) That's a big warning sign.

    --
    Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
  2. Solve a problem that needs solved. by tlambert · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Solve a problem that needs solved.

    For example, a guy wrote a Microsoft LAN Manager clone and talked about it on usenet. I spent six months harassing him to get the source pulled together and released so that I could run it on an Ultrix box for a lab full of AT&T PCs that our lab got as part of a grant from AT&T. The guy's name was Andrew Tridgell. His first message to me after that was "Help! I can't handle the volume of email I'm getting asking about it now!", so I suggested he set up a mailing list and let the people talk to each other instead of him.

    But it all started because he wrote code that solved a problem I needed solved, and then talked about it in a forum I happened to read. Without actually solving a problem, it would have gone nowhere.

    So your number one mission: Solve a problem that needs solved. Otherwise, you are just navel gazing.