Today I’m launching Libraries.io, a project that I’ve been working on for the past couple of months.

The intention is to help developers find new open source libraries, modules and frameworks and keep track of ones they depend upon.

The world of open source software depends on a lot of open source libraries. We are standing on the shoulders of giants, which helps us to reach further than we could otherwise.

The problem with platforms like Rubygems and NPM is there are so many libraries, with hundreds of new ones added every day. Trying to find the right library can be overwhelming.

How do you find libraries that help you solve problems? How do you then know which of those libraries are worth using?

GitHub Explore and Search are the best tools we have at the moment, but stars often turn searches into a popularity contest, telling you which projects people currently admire, rather than the ones they are actually using and depending on.

The search approach I’ve been working on within Libraries.io attempts to solve this, taking a leaf out of Google’s book.