Managing Software As Data » History » Version 14

Steve Welburn, 2013-01-08 12:13 PM

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h1. Managing Software As Data
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For new software, the same issues arise as for data:
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* [[Backing_up|backing up]]
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* [[Documenting_data|documentation]]
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However, whereas data changes slowly / infrequently, software is subject to ongoing changes during a project. Source code for software usually consists of text files and should therefore be stored in a suitable version control system (e.g. "Mercurial":http://mercurial.selenic.com/, "Subversion":http://subversion.apache.org/, "git":http://git-scm.com/). Binary releases of software may also be created as downloads for a project.
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Additionally, documentation has broader requirements - including both documentation to make the code maintainable (e.g. comments in the code, documenting APIs, Javadoc style documentation) and user documentation to explain how to install and use the software.
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The "Sound Software":http://www.soundsoftware.ac.uk project provides software project management facilities for digital music and audio research including Mercurial version control, downloads, documentation, issue lists and wikis through its "code repository":http://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk
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Other possible repositories for source code include:
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* "Sourceforge":http://sourceforge.net/ (Subversion, git, Mercurial, Bazaar, CVS)
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* "Google code":http://code.google.com/ (Subversion, git, Mercurial)
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* "github":https://github.com/ (git)
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* "bitbucket":https://bitbucket.org/ (git, Mercurial)
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The Sound Software project information on "choosing a version control system":http://soundsoftware.ac.uk/version-control-what-system-to-use and provides an "cross-platform, easy-to-use, graphical client":http://easyhg.org/ for use with Mercurial.