Managing Academic Software Development: Glossary

Key Points

Introduction
  • Well-made software is easier to expand and reuse

  • You need to produce reproducible research.

  • You are a user of your own code.

Issues
  • Issues are a way of recording bugs or feature requests.

  • Issues can be categorised by type.

  • Issues can reference other issues, and be referenced by commits.

Project Management
  • Projects are broken-down into self-contained tasks.

  • Tasks are represented as cards on a board.

  • Cards are arranged to show their status.

  • Issues can be added to project boards and labelled.

  • Project boards can show the priority of their tasks.

  • Forks are copies of entire repositories that can be synced up with the original.

Release Management
  • Releases are stable versions of the code.

  • Zenodo can automatically generate DOIs for releases.

  • Software licenses can restrict what others can do with your code.

Writing Sustainable Code
  • Always assume that someone else will read your code at a later date, including yourself.

  • Rename variables and functions to add context to make your code more readable.

  • Add comments to explain why something was done in a certain way if not obvious.

  • Don’t add comments that just restate what code clearly already does.

  • Use docstrings at the start of functions and files to explain their behaviour and input/output parameters.

Managing a Mini-Project
  • Problems with code and documentation can be tracked as issues.

  • Issues can be managed on a project board.

  • Issues can be fixed using the feature-branch workflow.

  • Stable versions of the code can be published as releases.

Survey

Glossary

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