Start with an overview or a brief description of what the project is about and what it does.
There is an expectation that each file of this repository template is concise and self-documented.
By including preferably a one-liner or if necessary a set of clear CLI instructions we improve user experience. This should be a frictionless installation process that works on various operating systems (macOS, Linux, Windows WSL) and handles all the dependencies.
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/org/repo/branch/install.sh)"The following software packages or their equivalents are expected to be installed
After a successful installation, provide an informative example of how this project can be used. Additional code snippets, screenshots and demos work well in this space. You may also link to the other documentation resources, e.g. the User Guide to demonstrate more use cases and to show more features.
The C4 model is a simple and intuitive way to create software architecture diagrams that are clear, consistent, scalable and most importantly collaborative. This should result in documenting all the system interfaces, external dependencies and integration points.
Most of the projects are built with customisability and extendability in mind. At a minimum, this can be achieved by implementing service level configuration options and settings. The intention of this section is to show how this can be used. If the system processes data, you could mention here for example how the input is prepared for testing - anonymised, synthetic or live data.
Describe or link templates on how to raise an issue, feature request or make a contribution to the codebase. Reference the other documentation files, like
- Environment setup for contribution, i.e.
CONTRIBUTING.md - Coding standards, branching, linting, practices for development and testing
- Release process, versioning, changelog
- Backlog, board, roadmap, ways of working
- High-level requirements, guiding principles, decision records, etc.
Provide a way to contact the owners of this project. It can be a team, an individual or information on the means of getting in touch via active communication channels, e.g. opening a GitHub discussion, raising an issue, etc.
The LICENCE.md file will need to be updated with the correct year and owner
Unless stated otherwise, the codebase is released under the MIT License. This covers both the codebase and any sample code in the documentation.
Any HTML or Markdown documentation is © Crown Copyright and available under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0.