In software distribution and software development, a README file contains information about the other files in a directory or archive of computer software. A form of documentation, it is usually a simple plain text file called, , , , or (to indicate the use of Markdown) The file's name is generally written in uppercase. On Unix-like systems in particular, this causes it to stand out – both because lowercase filenames are more common, and because the command commonly sorts and displays files in ASCII-code order, in which uppercase filenames will appear first.

Contents

A README file typically encompasses:

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 and open-source software 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 as a de facto standard platform for software distribution, many software packages have moved (or occasionally, copied) some of the above ancillary files and pieces of information to a website or wiki, 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 hosting website GitHub strongly encourages the creation of a README file – if 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 are also supported, and HTML conversion takes extensions into account – in particular a 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 file, which lists planned improvements.