When an idea turns into project, one of the steps is usually to check if there is already an implementation about it, finding it will bring the excitement to evaluate it. And probably one the following case scenarios will ocur:

• You are happy with your findings, and you are able to use it as is.
• You find something that is similar and you would like to extend it.
• You find something that might be the solution, but you don’t know how to try it.
• It’s too dificult so you decide to start from scratch.

In any case the project requires to have a rough documentation, and you might need to get in to the details to give it a try.

wouldn’t it be wonderfull to have the same schema for any software project of any kind?

The proposal is to have a common schema that allows a quickly immerse experience into the project.

Use a generic project structure to allows users to quickly evaluate the solution presented:

• A POSIX compliant implementation.
• Evaluate requirements to run the project, and provide actions to guide the user, like an interactive readme.
• If possible containarize the implementation.
• Define actions to start, stop and clean up the project.
• Define common actions, or recommended use cases.
• Define actions for CI that are independent of any automation software.

…

This title is a spoiler of the idea, use GNU Make. Makefiles are powerfull enough to provide a single entry point for any kind of project. Using a makefile to manage containers will add an extra layer of abstraction and facilitate the adoption, at least in my point of view.

While a clean Makefile would be enough, I’ve come accross with the project Docker compose makefile, which out of the box provides single line documentation with a nice color organization. The project has the following actions, along with some helpers for this library.

• clean
• dependencies
• start
• up
• stop
• status
• restart
• ps
• help

In my view, to make this generic for any project and simplify the CI, it would be good to have a:

• test #And any other action that could be related to CI
• deploy #Depending on the architecture