Have you ever found a GitHub project or anything that seemed nice and tempting to install until you dug a bit deeper?
What are some red flags that should detur anyone from installing and running something?
Have you ever found a GitHub project or anything that seemed nice and tempting to install until you dug a bit deeper?
What are some red flags that should detur anyone from installing and running something?
Having no user manual. A user manual is essential. A blurb about what it is and how to build it doesn’t count. And please, integrate it with the software, OS, or at least distribute a readme alongside. So much offline software assumes you have a 100% stable internet connection for online help. Also, please don’t throw up a wiki and rely on your users to do it.
This might be asking too much, but it wouldn’t hurt to pay attention to principles of good technical writing as well. A well-written user manual brings your users a great deal of joy.
User manuals, I remember those, fondly. Unfortunately a pretty dead concept these days, but certainly a green flag if there is one, but absence is not a red flag.
A readthedocs.io entry is also a green flag (you can always download it for later offline…).