[lbhdc]

I feel like this has good intention, but I think it misses key information that should be in the readme.

Its really great to have a blurb about what the thing does, the big idea behind why it exists, and how it fits into the rest of the universe.

I also really want instructions for how to build the repository. It seems like that is really downplayed in this guide. I feel like that is misaligned with the target audience of those visiting the repository. I would rather sacrifice overview for instructions on how to use the thing.

[drako999]

That was an intentional decision we took because we realised that the majority of users struggled to grasp the concept behind the project and how to use it. We didn't feel that we were ready to optimise for contributors yet :)

Good point about mentioning why it exists!

[lbhdc]

Totally fair, and I agree contributor docs generally make more sense to be in their own document. That is how I feel I have seen most repos handle those docs.

I was thinking less about contributors, and more about someone who just wants to use your project locally. Spin it up, try it out.

Scanning through the appsmith repo, I don't see any files that jump out to me as documentation on how to build and run it. So it seems I would need to dig through the build system to discover what runnable things are in there. I would probably have to look at some application code to figure out what kind of storage it wants to talk to and how to configure that.

That is a lot of work to give it a test drive. I assume this is to keep some moat for the saas offering, but that dx makes me less likely to consider exploring it to begin with.