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6 Lessons Learned Maintaining a Popular Open-Source Project

Simon Egersand 🎈 on June 08, 2022

Between 2016 and 2018 I maintained an open-source project with +800k downloads/month. I learned six invaluable lessons by doing this, and I will no...
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Rajasegar Chandran

We can make good commit messages common by adding the necessary tooling for the repositories like Conventional commits and enforcing the style with linters and git hooks. It will also be easy for the contributors to follow a standard convention if there is one already available for them to refer.
Anyway as a fellow maintainer, I can agree with you on these lessons.

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Simon Egersand 🎈

In my experience, tooling can only do so much to help with good commit messages. I believe more in a good mindset. If you know the value of a good commit message you will write a good commit message. But if you don't know the value it might just be an inconvenience.

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Arth

Wow, that was great 👍
I was thinking about maintaining open-source project,

Thanks for sharing your experience

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Simon Egersand 🎈

I'm happy you liked it! :)

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Jon Wright

I'd love to see a follow up post of what you think a good commit message entails.

The must haves. Things to consider including. Things to exclude.

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Simon Egersand 🎈

I love discussing what makes a good git commit message. That's a great idea! I've added it to my list of topics.

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Andrew Baisden

Super insightful not everybody has a first hand experience working on open source projects. Great article.

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Simon Egersand 🎈

Thanks, Andrew! I learned a lot and I would recommend this to anyone who's up for a challenge :)

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Areful Islam🤝🌎

Keypoints are great. Is that all open-sources are same scenario?

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Simon Egersand 🎈

This is my experience. I don't know how it is for other projects. But I would guess many maintainers can relate.

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Steve

Nice read! Regarding the documentation part I’m quiet on the opposite. I am happy to read documentation because than I don’t have to ask questions. 😄

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Simon Egersand 🎈

OSS maintainers love people like you 😄

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Shinigami

Happy to read your experience
I'm one of the maintainers of FakerJS and I can definitely agree with most of your experiences

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Simon Egersand 🎈

That's, in a way, comforting. I'm not alone 😋

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Lorenzo Zarantonello

Nice one!
Good food for thought!
I think everyone could be a bit more aware of that little Git Commit we write multiple times per day!

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Gulshan Aggarwal

Amazing content!

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Simon Egersand 🎈

Thanks, Gulshan! I'm glad you liked it :)

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AquaDrehz

I saw python lib named diagrams.
It used to create diagram picture from code. It got a hundreads of PR remained. Still thinking to hop on. But python is not my prefered language. Any suggestion?

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Simon Egersand 🎈

My advice is to try it! You will learn something, even if Python is not your preferred language. Consider it a challenge and I think you'll enjoy it :)

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Glenn A Miller

"Stuff We All Get"

Thanks for that!

I always wondered what that stood for.

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Laian Braum

Such a short and great read! Thanks for this article, Simon! You gave me some really interesting points to think about.

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Simon Egersand 🎈

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it.