

Ask HN: Where to find open source libraries? - breck

Where do you look for open source code (classes and routines) before coding your own?<p>I check github, then sourceforge, then roll my own.<p>Am I missing any other major sites?<p>Thanks!
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beagle3
<http://freshmeat.net/> \- the biggest catalog you can find of released open
source software, be it libraries or full blown. Strictly speaking, it is
Linux/Unix software -- but almost all of it is open source.

Like with commercial software, projects vary greatly in their quality and
maturity; but freshmeat also collects release history with changes per
release, which would give you a good idea of how well maintained, and how
responsive project maintainers are.

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cperciva
Generally speaking, I don't look. If I'm not already aware of a library, it's
probably not mature enough for me to be willing to trust it.

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savant
Depending upon the area you are searching, I would turn to that community.

For example, Rails developers might turn to <http://rubygems.org/> for Rails
gems. I tried to replicate this for the CakePHP framework by building
CakePackages (<http://cakepackages.com/>) .

Outside of a framework, try searching Google Groups and asking on IRC for
places where code is indexed for your specific language/development stack. I
find pestering the framework/language core developers is an easy way to find
out the information I need, and they are usually happy to answer questions as
long as I document and answer those questions for others later (blogging,
updating documentation, etc.).

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johkra
I usually use Google. This will cover blog posts or forum postings, too, which
surprisingly often feature announcements of good libraries without any
presence on sf.net or similar.

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scorpioxy
A library to do what? Maybe we can help.

You typically don't go looking for libraries, you would have a certain task in
mind and then use your google fu to look for that specific term which would
hopefully turn you into some of them.

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Rust
<http://planet-source-code.com> has been kind to me in the past, although it
seems to be lower quality than most.

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Concours
<http://code.google.com/> has been a good place for me.

