Make your projects' metatooling accessible to as many potential contributors as possible.

Does your project rely on things like test harnesses, build steps, or homegrown tooling? Consider using triple scripts.

Triple scripts are easy to write, easy to read, and easy to run.

Triple scripts are meant to live inside your project's repo and are:

Self-contained
Triple scripts are single-file programs that work offline; they do not rely on any magical directory structure, nor do they involve late-binding against libraries dynamically fetched over the network or installed from an external package registry
Homologous
Triple scripts can always be used either by double-clicking to launch a graphical UI or using the same script's command-line interface from the terminal, accommodating all persons and their preferred way to work at that moment
Automorphic
Triple scripts adhere as closely as possible to the "package distribution is source distribution" principle, which means their executable format is text-based, so you or a potential contributor can open them in a text editor to read, understand, and change—just as readily as you could with any tooling based on the POSIX shell, Python, etc.

Should contributing to your project—or even merely using it—really require your collaborators to perform some preliminary ritual like downloading and configuring additional software packages?

Because triple scripts run everywhere, adopting them means anyone can get started right away, from anywhere—regardless of what kind of development ecosystem that person does or doesn't normally inhabit. When a project adopts triple scripts, obtaining a source code archive or cloning the project repo is the only setup step.

Check out an example project that uses triple scripts, or read about how triple scripts work.

triplescripts.org is on a mission to eliminate "implicit step 0" from software development. Right now, working towards that goal means building and shipping tools. Our main focus is on:

You can browse all of our releases at releases.triplescripts.org.