OSS Resources

Repo Templates#

We have a repo template you can use to scaffold the writing of essential project docs, and guides below for using our templates:

• README Template Guide
• Contributing Template Guide
• Code of Conduct Template Guide
• License Template Guide

Tutorials#

These are tutorials we’ve come across and recommend (with a few we’ve written ourselves 😊)!

Topics#

• Getting Started with Open Source
• Contributing to a Project
• Software Development and Best Practices
• Maintaining and Sustaining Software
• Building Community for Your Project
• Software Packaging
• Licensing and Compliance

Getting Started with Open Source#

• Introduction to Git
• How to Contribute to Open Source

Contributing to a Project#

• Social Coding and Open Source Collaboration
• Writing Documentation for Software Projects
• Making Good Pull Requests
• Issue Tracking with GitHub
• Collaborative Git for Teams
• Collaboration in Open Research Projects
• Forge Your Future with Open Source

Software Development and Best Practices#

• Continuous Integration and Delivery with GitHub Actions
• CI/CD for Research Software with GitLab CI
• Unit Testing and TDD in Python
• Tools and practices for FAIR research software
• Reproducible Research
• Intermediate Research Software Development Skills (Python) Lesson Material
• Introduction to Docker for Research
• Research Software Engineering Course
• Intermediate Python Development
• Modular Programming with Python
• Testing and Test-Driven Development
• Reproducible Computational Environments using Containers

Maintaining and Sustaining Software#

• OpenSauced’s guide to becoming a maintainer
• GitHub’s Guides
• Starting an Open Source Project
• Finding Users for Your Project
• Best Practices for Maintainers
• Solving the Maker-Taker problem | Dries Buytaert
• How to make reviewing pull requests a better experience
• Effective Code Review
• PsyArXiv Preprints | “My code is s**t”: Negative automatic thoughts and outcomes of a behavioral experiment for code review anxiety
• Example Contribution Ladder
• Metrics

Building Community for Your Project#

• (Our own!) Growing Community Around Open Source Projects
• Building Community
• Leadership and Governance
• Building Welcoming Communities

Software Packaging#

• Python Packaging for Beginners
• Python Packaging
• Python Package Development Best Practices
• R Packaging

Understanding Licensing & Compliance#

• (UC-specific!) UCoP’s guide to choosing a license
• (General) Understanding Software Licensing