What to think about when making a project open source? [closed]

Question

I'm just about to publish a project as open source, and would really like some feedback on a couple of things:

1. The code is quite clean but the version control history isn't. Mistakes, debug code, perhaps inappropriate code, etc. Should I clear the history before publishing, or import it anyway to the public repository?

2. Should I prioritize making a tutorial, feature explanations or api documentation?

3. Other thoughts that makes a new project easy for people to get into?

Answer 1

In my very humble opinion:

1) If you're set on going open source, be proud of your code. We all know there are mistakes and bugs along the way. There are going to be more, too, so don't feel like you can't display those publically. You can!

2) Definitely. Probably in that, order, too, because that's the order that people using your product are going to read them. They'll have to use your software before they decide to work on it.

3) The best advice I can give is to have clear build instructions, hopefully with scripts to help people configure the environment. A common plague with open source software is requiring new developers to download tons of libraries and configure their box to work just right in order to be able to build the software. That, to me, is very frustrating and can put me off very quickly.

Good luck!