I have a somewhat popular open source project. It's used by enough people to get a good number of bug reports and some pull requests per month, but not popular enough to have a development team or steady project managers or contributors.Due to a lack of time, I haven't had the time to properly maintain the project. Even though I currently have some spare time that I can spend on the project, the time that's needed to get the project up to quality looks beyond my reach.How do I salvage this project, instead of it coming abandoned?Edit: I'm looking for a specific solution, preferably someone who has experienced the same issue and managed to overcome it. Answers like 'Trying asking for help' without more detail are not useful.
How can I prevent abandoning a project due to a lack of time?
project management
Start by writing down a list of current issues and make sure it's easily accessible. Other contributors will then have a clear objective: they can fix issues!Continue by writing down a list of anything you would like to change long-term, in small steps. This allows new people to see what the initial thought behind the project was, and they might want to invest some time to complete these features.Contacting contributors (and people who forked your project) is definitely a good idea. It's not difficult to do, takes little time, but there is a chance indeed that one of these contributors will be able to fully take over.Depending on how much time you have, create proper documentation. Contributing is a lot easier when you don't have to spend a week trying to understand the code! Make it easy for people to take the first step, and they might take a few more.In short, you simply need to communicate to the current and future users that the project is no longer maintained, and is looking for new people to maintain the project.There's a good chance no-one is willing to do this, but I believe -in that case- it's probably not that big of a deal when development halts.Remember that you do not owe anyone anything, but communication is a simple act of decency.