A guide to publishing JavaScript open source projects

http://www.conductor.com/nightlight/guide-publishing-javascript-open-source-projects/

by benmanbs • 11 years ago

6 4 11 years ago

conductor.com

benmanbs2• 11 years ago

Author here to address any questions or corrections

lhorie2• 11 years ago

A couple of other things I do w/ Mithril.js ( http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/ )

- write documentation for the API methods (and arguments, return values, and arguments to callbacks and their return values, if applicable) and show examples of usage

- follow semantic versioning (x.x.X for bug fixes, x.X.x for backwards-compatible changes, X.x.x for breaking changes)

- consider versioning documentation in addition to releases if your project can be used as mission critical software (e.g. if it's a framework). This can be as simple as creating a task that copies a snapshot of the docs to an archive

- maintain a change log

- make sure your release is on the master branch (not gh-pages) if you're publishing to component.github.io

- setup channels of communication for discussion and support (gitter.im, IRC, mailing list, etc)

- create a tag in StackOverflow.com

benmanbs2• 11 years ago

Thanks so much for the read!

There were some things I intentionally left out (how to write good code, documentation) because I figured those were out of scope of this post (I did try to reference them subtly with the line "the code is in a place where it’s ready to publish"). I also left out some of the things you mentioned (versioning documentation, changelog, channels of communication, SO tag) because I figured those might fall into a Part 2 type of post, where I'd say "Now that you have a first version of your library published, let's discuss how to maintain it."

I'll be honest with you, I had a little issue with the length of this post, so I was trying to balance how much to include or omit.

I really appreciate the feedback, and I'll keep those points in mind for a Part 2 post!

lhorie2• 11 years ago

It was a good post, I wasn't trying to criticize it, just wanted to add to it based on my own experience :)

Looking forward to a part 2!

A guide to publishing JavaScript open source projects

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