When starting a new open source project, apart from coding following are the things that need to be done.

Docs

  • README
  • LICENSE
  • How to install?
  • How to use?
  • Code of conduct guidelines
  • Copyright
  • Issue template like .github in repo.

Developer docs

  • How to install for developer?
  • Developer docs
  • Contribution guidelines
  • Team meetings info
  • Team communication channels
  • Issue label guidelines
  • Coding standards
  • Code placement doc, or something that explains the way code is ordered
  • Design document

Development

  • Makefile
  • Unit tests
  • Functional tests
  • Coverage check
  • CI for automatic tests
  • Distro based package

This is just few things that I could think of, please suggest if you know more in comments.