Overview

A project like TaxonWorks needs diverse contributions from many to succeed over the long-term. Technically, TaxonWorks adopts a range of strategies to make it successful from a development standpoint, highlights include:

  • Open source - All elements of the project are open source under an MIT license.
  • Live technical support - Via weekly, year-round support meetings, online-chat, and video-conference on demand. Connect via Events.
  • Tests - TaxonWorks has extensive tests helping to maintain application cohesiveness and to prevent the introduction of errors.
  • Documentation - The project is well documented both here, and in code and everyone is encouraged to contribute to it.
  • Continuous integration (CI) - Code is tested and builds created via CI, meaning all contributions trigger tests, and builds can be deployed with minimal effort.
  • Code Generators - Stub a new task view (core feature) or batch-loader so that coding experiments can start instantly.
  • JSON API ("dogfooding") - TaxonWorks largely uses RESTful conventions, and a JSON serving back end that is nearly 1:1 accessible via a public-facing front end, this means if you can imagine using it externally, you can.
  • Containerized - TaxonWorks is available as a Docker container facilitating deployment, development, and local use.
  • Meta-projects - Example meta-projects exist, for example taxonworks_stats (demo) illustrating how to build an application off of the API
  • Rails - TaxonWorks is built on Rails, a framework used by Github, Shopify, and other major projects that produce web-applications. This ensure that there is a large, well established pool of potential expertise to draw from. It further provides a framework of conventions that facilitate maintenance over time.
  • Hackathons and Workshops - The Species File Group and its members have held hackathons and many in-house joint workshops. Contact them if you're interested in participating on site. They are also interested in supporting visits to would-be developers, students, or others wishing to get a boot-camp in TaxonWorks development.