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Discussion on: Top 1 way to not mess up your project

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Michael Currin

Pro tip:

Add versions to your software. Keep it as pre-release stage as a long as you want.

0.1.0
0.2.0
...
0.51.0
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That will lower the expectations of the community and for yourself (you can break stuff and experiment with less fear that someone relies on your software).

When you think it is "good enough" to be relied upon as a library or CLI tool or whatever, then you can give it as release.

1.0.0
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And publish it to a registry so people can install it.

From then on, there is a higher expectation from yourself and others to make "correct" software. It doesn't have to be perfect, but someone would hope that if they reported a bug that you'd fix it when you can.

Also you can still commit experimental code to your main branch. Just hold off on your 1.1.0 increment until you are comfortable the code is "stable".