Best Practices for Setup and Management of an Open Source Project
- by VirtuosiMedia
Later this year I want to release a PHP framework that I've been working on as open source. I do use source control (SVN), but it's on an extremely limited basis. I'm self-taught, I develop by myself and don't have the experience of working with large teams. I have some ideas about what can help make a project successful, but I'm fuzzy on some of the details. Since it's not yet released, I want to do everything I can to set up the right infrastructure from the beginning. What do I need to know in order to setup and manage a successful project?
Some ideas that I have to make it successful (beyond marketing it):
Good documentation and tutorials
Automated unit tests and builds to
push update to the website
A clear roadmap
Bug Tracking integrated with the
source control
A style guide to keep the code
consistent along with clear
A forum for the community to get
support, share ideas, etc.
A good example application built with
the framework
A blog to keep the community informed
Maintaining backwards compatibility
wherever possible
Some of my questions:
How do I setup and automate a one
step submit-test-commit-generate API
docs-push update to website process?
How do I handle (technically)
submissions from other users? How can
I ensure that those submissions must
be approved before being integrated?
What are some of the pitfalls that
can be avoided in terms of the
project community? I'd prefer to have
it be as friendly and helpful as
possible without a lot of drama.
I'd love to learn from your experience on any of these points. If you think I'm missing anything big, please share that as well. Any resources (preferably geared toward a beginner) that you could point me towards would also be greatly appreciated.
