If going through the setup is hell, what makes you believe that it'll be easier to contribute after you get it for free? I still believe the best way is for OSS projects to ask contributors to do some mentoring...
> what makes you believe that it'll be easier to contribute after you get it [setup] for free
I'm flabbergasted. Like.. I don't even know where to start. You've been through an on-boarding process before right? Have you led one? Haven't you ever watched a junior dev get dragged through all sorts of arbitrary "don't breathe on it" setups just so they can start making tiny isolated bug fixes?
And even then, you're just following instructions where even most high level developers don't even know why their project is set up the way it is.
We've worked on very, very, very different projects your and I.
I don't understand what your comment have to do with contributing to OSS. Anyway, I don't really believe that codespaces or any out of the box tool is going to be a magical solution for junior devs not be dragged in those kind of setups in the projects that you're referring to.
> magical solution for junior devs not be dragged in those kind of setups in the projects that you're referring to
That's exactly what this is. The setup is part of a clonable environment. So for large scale compiled projects, you wouldn't have to:
1. Download the massive thing
2. Get it to compile
3. Potentially not have to compile many files that already have their `*.o` (or equivalent) file in the environment.
It could be like just walking up to some other developers fully functioning station, and getting started.
