What are some examples of open-source projects with great READMEs?

Hey DEV Community👋🏽

What are some examples of open-source projects that have great READMEs? Specifically, projects that:

• Describe what the project is
• Provide installation instructions and other documentation
• Include instructions for contributing to the project

(Other criteria are outlined in this blog post, "How to Write a Great README")

In addition to providing examples, what do you think makes these READMEs effective? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Comments

[Lorraine Lee]

I can't off the top of my head think of a specific project with a great README, but a platform I associate with great READMEs is npmjs.com. The convention there seems to be "lead by example." It seems to me anyway that usually the first item in the doc for a node module is an example instantiation of call of whatever it is. Contrast this with UNIX man pages, where it's almost my reflex to press G (go to bottom of man page) which is where there's usually one or more usage examples, above which is an exhaustive list of all possible command switches or function parameters. (cw pun ahead) You might say the npmjs.com philosophy is "lead by example" while the UNIX man pages philosophy is "bury the lede."

[Mahesh K]

Not in context with readme but if you check how Kent Dodds writes his issues and also guidelines for newbies, it's definitely inspiring in context of knowledge-transfer. I follow him to see how he transfers his learning to newbies and others. His github and twitter activity on that part is amazing.

[Sakshat]

This one's mine, pretty simple but I like putting in diagrams/images.

sakshatshinde / Plei

A game launcher with no bloat

Plei

A game launcher with no bloat

This project is ready for the launchers given below!

• Steam
• Origin
• Epic Games Launcher
• Uplay
• Standalone Games

---

Why is this a thing?

As new game launchers came into being it increasingly got annoying to keep track of all the games over different stores/platform. I wanted to make a unified front where users can access all their games, including the one with no launchers. The goal behind this launcher is to be simple, minimilistic and bloat-free

---

How to install?

• Download the latest version from releases
• Run the setup.exe
• Run Plei.exe (May require admin privileages if installed in C:// drive)

---

How to install? (for devs)

This installation assumed you have python 3.X installed. Get python here

• Download Plei and extract it to your desired location
• Run the following command

pip install -r requirements.txt

• It might error out on "steamfiles" install. To fix this change your…

View on GitHub

[Roy]

I made one recently. It's for my icon open-source project called Neu Icons. At the beginning of writing the README, I found many issues about how I can make it visually as I want. But time goes by I learned how the markdown works and so on. And now I am pretty happy with it.

The importance of writing README for me have these aspects:

• Describe what the project is for
• Clear information about how to use it
• Write as detail as possible, it will help people to understand the project, a lot
• Give some notes if some features are under construction
• Give some credits to people who helped to bring the project live to the community

[Stephanie Morillo]

Good tips, thanks Roy!

[Swastik Baranwal]

I have spent a lot of time on this one. I hope you can give feedbacks on this. (I find my README great btw c:)

[Charanjit Singh]

I'd recommend slateJS . It's WYSIWYG editor with which you can build even Google Docs. Have a look.

[Stephanie Morillo]

Is there a README for this project? What makes it a good README?

[Isaac Lee]

Hi, there! 👋

I created ember-container-query and am happy with how its README turned out. I like it for these reasons:

• Continuous integration badges to deliver confidence
• Quick demo GIF
• 1-line installation
• List of practical applications
• <summary> tags to hide details and not overwhelm first-time visitors

ijlee2 / ember-container-query

Make container queries that harness the power of Ember Octane.

ember-container-query

Make container queries that harness the power of Ember Octane.

Open the demo app to see ember-container-query in action. (There's even a 404 page!)

Installation

ember install ember-container-query

Use FastBoot? ⚠️

This addon uses nullish coalescing operator ??. If you use FastBoot (with Node < v14.0) and only support browsers that natively support ??, you will run into a build error:

/var/folders/2z/93zyyhx13rs879qr8rzyxrb40000gn/T/broccoli-689520dxo26a682Mz/out-529-broccoli_merge_trees/assets/vendor.js:121232
  return this.args.features ?? {};
                             ^
SyntaxError: Unexpected token '?'

To prevent this, please make sure to add node: 'current' to your config/targets.js file.

'use strict';
const browsers = [ ... ];
module.exports = {
  browsers,
  node: 'current'
};

Applications

Where can you use container queries? Here are real-life (and some theoretical) applications!

Create reusable components that are independent of screen size ♻️

1. Components form a core of an Ember app. We love components!

2. With…

View on GitHub

[Konstantin Tarkus]

Additionally, it helps to have a "Tech Stack" section somewhere at the top near "Getting Started":

github.com/kriasoft/nodejs-api-sta...
github.com/kriasoft/react-firebase...

[Stephanie Morillo]

Agreed. These READMEs are excellent!

I really like how they outline the repo structure and the requirements before installing the software. I'm also a huge fan of the contributing section and how they guide users through each next step.

[Stephanie Morillo]

Very helpful—thank you for sharing!

[Milán Tenk]

I made recently one of my hobby projects open source. It is an Angular component, you can check its README here:
github.com/milantenk/ngx-interacti...

What I held important to have

• a gif, which gives a rough overview about the component
• a live demo link, which can give a hands-on experience
• description about the usage of the component
• a short summary, how to get started with the development of the library

[Stephanie Morillo]

I love the GIF and link to live demo!!! That's an awesome concept. Thank you for sharing!