One of my pet peeves is cloning a project to start work and finding that the setup instructions don’t exist, aren’t complete, or don’t work. It’s already difficult to get everything running, and these extra issues just add to the frustration. Alex has a great idea:
In my ideal situation, a developer being able to have a local copy of code up and running should only be limited by the speed of their internet connection. The best way to ensure this is the case is to regularly delete your dev environment and clone a fresh copy down. This gives you a great opportunity to ask some questions:
How long does it take for you to get set up?
Is the documentation correct and easily accessible?
Is it clear who can be contacted if there are questions?
What is the process for contributing?
How can someone report an issue?
I’m going to try this soon, it’s really easy to forget to update documentation, so setting aside some time to test your own instructions is a great approach.