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> If the project requires me to locally install a database, configure ports, or anything of the like, that's a shining red flag that things are very wrong

I disagree here slightly. I think it's reasonable that a database setup may be necessary, especially if abstraction layers (ie. ORMs) aren't being used for SQL, and SQLite is not your database of choice. Sure, you could set up docker, but not every project adopts or even likes docker.

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Perhaps the point here is that it shouldn't be necessary to separately configure a database from the command used to fire up the project. For example using Docker w/ docker-compose, a single command should be able to get most projects up and running with all of the required system dependencies included (database, etc).

I also have a small caveat. If you have a docker setup or a similar style of setup, if it is not obvious how to do this by hand, then you should write documentation on how to do it. Honestly, my standard is that you should have the same level of setup instructions as you would expect from a good open source project of the same complexity.

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