How to Effectively Build and Deploy Customizations on an Open Source Project?

From a management perspective, if you're forking an open source project, there are several essential things to establish:

1. Documentation for every version increment.
2. Clear support strategies and procedures.
3. A solid project roadmap.
4. Adequate support and development teams.

Without these, you risk creating technical debt that can become unmanageable if your project isn’t maintained properly. Make sure that you're prepared for these demands or else the project may become unsustainable.

Using Git forks is a solid method for this! You can easily pull from the vendor's branch to keep your code updated. Just keep in mind that if you add features that the vendor later incorporates in their own way, it can lead to significant headaches when it comes to merging your code. If you want your changes to be accepted back into the main project, make sure they can merge cleanly with the latest vendor release. Also, engaging with the maintainers by opening issues about your developments can help you get insights on whether they’re interested in your contributions.

The two main issues when building on open-source projects are upstream churn and implicit assumptions. Frequent API changes from the vendor can turn your integrations into costly technical debt over time. To avoid this:

- Keep your modifications minimal and leverage plugins instead.
- Stay updated with the vendor's roadmap so you can align your project’s future developments with theirs.
- Contribute back changes you make where you can to ensure your work influences the vendor's direction instead of drifting away from it.