Managing an Open Source Project
Kent C. Dodds
Utah
wife, 4 kids, & a dog
PayPal, Inc.
Please Stand...
if you are able ❤️ ♿️
What this talk is
- Managing an open source project
- Tips and tricks from personal experience
What this talk is not
- The definitive guide
- Perfect advice for all scenarios
Let's
Get
STARTED!
Must Haves
what EVERY project needs
It's not open source without one
Code of Conduct
Make your community a friendly and safe one
Define Project Scope
What does "done" mean?
ROADMAP.md
will/wont/might do
Extensibility
Redux is "done"
Tech Chat: https://youtu.be/FlcB8T0miO8
Automate stuff
avoid repetition
Saving time is not the only reason to automate workflows
Simplify Setup
$ git clone git@giturl.git
$ cd project
$ npm run setup
Automate Code Quality
Automate Releases
Community
Open source === people
Documentation
Explain the problem
Explain the solution
Installation
API Documentation
Examples
Tutorials
Blogposts
Talks
Community Sites
Issues
Pull Requests
Domain with short URLs
- help.your-lib.com → codesandbox.com/...
- issue.your-lib.com → codesandbox.com/...
- learn.your-lib.com → getting started guide
- question.your-lib.com → Stack overflow (with tag)
- changelog.your-lib.com → ... your guess...
- chat.your-lib.com → ... obvious...
Issues
Get out of the way...
Pull Requests
Get out of the way...
Getting Contributors
You can't do it on your own...
Your Contributor Pipeline
Encourage Contribution
Don't do everything yourself
CONTRIBUTING.md
Docs for Contributing
Support AMPAP
As Many Platforms As Possible
I just made that up... It basically means support Windows AND Mac :-)
Don't commit generated files
They're confusing
Roll out the Red Carpet for Newcomers
Helping newbies helps us all
Recognize contributors
even non-code contributions
MAINTAINING.md
The project should not die with you...
Give commit access
Freely and early
Resources
Thank you!
Managing an Open Source Project
By Kent C. Dodds
Managing an Open Source Project
Awesome! You’ve made it big! You’ve published an open source project and people are actually using it to make the world a better place. Achievement unlocked! Great job! But wait… what’s this? An issue? Oh, it’s just a bug. Pretty quick and easy. Fixed, released, done, #likeaboss 😎. What’s this? A PR? How cool! Wait… That’s not quite right… Oh, a question! Cool! And another! And another… eh… and another… Uh oh… I think I’ve just sold my soul to this project. You start an open source project to scratch your own itch and suddenly other people start using it and they need your help. This can easily start eating up your time big time and before you know it, your kids start feeling neglected. I’ve had to deal with this in a few projects and I’ve learned a thing or two about work/life/oss balance. I have a few tricks that help you make the project manage itself a bit more while still being friendly and helpful to users of the project.
