SoundSoftware Code Site

h1. Tips of the Day

*Show your face*

If you have a "Gravatar":http://gravatar.com/ image, it will appear alongside your user name in "activity pages":/activity and the like.  If you'd like to set up an image for this, just hop along to "Gravatar":http://gravatar.com/ and register an image using your email address as it appears on this site.

*Import an existing repository*

Have an existing repository in Subversion, Mercurial or another system that you'd like to import with all of its history?

You can do this yourself with the Mercurial @convert@ extension, but you may find it simpler to "ask us to do it for you":mailto:info@soundsoftware.ac.uk.  Just drop us a line, tell us your code.soundsoftware.ac.uk project name, and let us know where your existing repository lives.

*Project hosted elsewhere?*

You can create a project on this site even if the code itself is hosted somewhere else, if you want to make it easier for other researchers to find your work.  Just include the Homepage link when you create the project, and be sure to include enough of a description to make it clear what the project is about.

If you don't need a repository hosted here, go to your project's Settings and in the "Modules" tab, switch off "Repository".

*Need help?*

Confused?  Don't know where to begin?  Messed something up in your project settings or repository?

We can help -- ask us!  We're nice people.  Follow the "Help":/projects/soundsoftware-site/wiki/Help link (it's in the bar at the top of every page) and read the "How to contact us" section.

*Tell us your institution*

There is now an _Institution_ setting in your "Account page":/my/account.

If you registered here before this setting was added, it would be great if you could find a moment to go back and let us know which research institution you're affiliated with.

Thanks!

*Document your code!*

If you use "Doxygen":http://doxygen.org or "Javadoc":http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/javadoc/ to add inline documentation to code that you put in your project repository, then your documentation will be extracted automatically and made available in a "Code docs" page for the project!

See the "Vamp Plugin SDK":/projects/vamp-plugin-sdk project for an example (look for the "Code docs" link in the navigation).

"Read more about this":/projects/soundsoftware-site/wiki/Docgen.

*Make your licence intentions clear*

If your project is public, or might be public one day, you really should have some sort of licence statement in it so people know what they can do with it.  The default copyright position, if you don't include any licence at all, is that nobody can do anything much with your software.

Consider adding one of the common open source licences ("GPL":http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html or "BSD":http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php) if you want to make your code freely re-usable.  But even if you don't want to do that, please, at least make your usage intentions clear in the accompanying text.

(While you're at it, please double-check that you're not incorporating anyone else's code whose terms aren't compatible with your own!)

*Tag your projects!*

You can now add tags to your projects, describing them a little bit to make them easier to find -- this is a jolly good idea, please go ahead and add some.  You can find some ideas for the sorts of things you might like to tag "here":/news/8.

*Check licences of any code you're using*

Are you incorporating any existing code into your project?  If so, you should check that you have permission to reuse it and make sure you preserve its copyright and licence notes. "Read more about open source software licences here":http://soundsoftware.ac.uk/open-source-software-licences-explained.