In software distribution and

software development Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

, a README file contains information about the other files in a directory or

archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...

of computer

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

. A form of

documentation Documentation is any communicable material that is used to describe, explain or instruct regarding some attributes of an object, system or procedure, such as its parts, assembly, installation, maintenance, and use. As a form of knowledge managem ...

, it is usually a simple

plain text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects ( floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a lim ...

file called README, Read Me, READ.ME, README.txt, or README.md (to indicate the use of

Markdown Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber created Markdown in 2004 as an easy-to-read markup language. Markdown is widely used for blogging and instant messaging, and also used ...

) The file's name is generally written in uppercase. On

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

systems in particular, this causes it to stand outboth because lowercase filenames are more common, and because the ls command commonly sorts and displays files in ASCII-code order, in which uppercase filenames will appear first.

A README file typically encompasses: *

Configuration Configuration or configurations may refer to: Computing * Computer configuration or system configuration * Configuration file, a software file used to configure the initial settings for a computer program * Configurator, also known as choice board ...

instructions * Installation instructions * Operating instructions * A file

manifest Manifest may refer to: Computing * Manifest file, a metadata file that enumerates files in a program or package * Manifest (CLI), a metadata text file for CLI assemblies Events * Manifest (convention), a defunct anime festival in Melbourne, Au ...

(a list of files in the directory or archive) *

Copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

and

licensing A license (American English) or licence ( Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another par ...

information * Contact information for the distributor or author * A list of known bugs * Troubleshooting instructions * Credits and acknowledgments * A

changelog A changelog (also spelled change log) is a log or record of all notable changes made to a project. The project is often a website or software project, and the changelog usually includes records of changes such as bug fixes, new features, etc. Som ...

(usually aimed at fellow programmers) * A news section (usually aimed at end users)

History

The convention of including a README file began in the mid-1970s. Early Macintosh system software installed a Read Me on the Startup Disk, and README files commonly accompanied third-party software. In particular, there is a long history of

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

and

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

including a README file; the GNU Coding Standards encourage including one to provide "a general overview of the package". Since the advent of the

web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

as a ''de facto'' standard platform for

software distribution Software distribution is the process of delivering software to the end user. Free software distribution tools GNU Autotools are widely used for which consist of source files written in C++ and the C programming language, but are not limited t ...

, many software packages have moved (or occasionally, copied) some of the above ancillary files and pieces of information to a

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

, sometimes including the README itself, or sometimes leaving behind only a brief README file without all of the information required by a new user of the software. The popular

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

hosting website

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

strongly encourages the creation of a README fileif one exists in the main (top-level) directory of a repository, it is automatically presented on the repository's front page. In addition to plain text, various other formats and

file extensions A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the filename, name of a computer file (for example, Text file, .txt, MP3, .mp3, .exe) that indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename e ...

are also supported, and HTML conversion takes extensions into accountin particular a README.md is treated as GitHub Flavored Markdown.

As a generic term

The expression "readme file" is also sometimes used generically, for other files with a similar purpose. For example, the source-code distributions of many free software packages (especially those following the Gnits Standards or those produced with GNU Autotools) include a standard set of readme files: : Also commonly distributed with software packages are an FAQ file and a

TODO 

Todo may refer to:
*  Todo Bichig, Kalmyk ‘Clear Script’
* To-do list, a time management implementation
* TODO (tag), a computer programming comment tag
*  ''Todo'' (album)

Tōdō may refer to:
* Tōkyūjutsu () or Tōdō (), a Japanese divin ...

file, which lists planned improvements.

Contents

History

As a generic term

See also

Notes

References

Further reading