Don't get me wrong - I don't think that you should go through it every time. Also, I'm not sure anyone reads the documented API of a dependency until some unexpected behaviour is happening. My basic point is that the dependency hell is not the biggest barrier for an open source contribution. In fact, mixing both problems is a bit strange to me - codespaces is not going to magically solve the dependency hell - it's just going to shift it to some other part of the configuration. The best way to start contributing to an OSS project is really be to have a mentor in project who could guide you through it during your first contribution. Personally, I'm willing to fight the machine for a couple of hours/days to get something to compile -- however, it's hard to justify reading code for weeks in the hope I can tackle an open issue.