FAQ - support - Project Hosting on Google Code FAQ

You can use Google Page Creator to create web pages, and then create a link to them from your project's front page. Google's Writely is another great way to collaboratively create documents and publish them on the web. Or, link from your project to any existing web pages.

Can I use another hosting service for parts of my project?

Yes. If Google Code doesn't have all the tools you need, feel free to start with Google Code and use a combination of tools from this site and others. Use hyperlinks on your project summary page to guide your users to these other resources.

Why can't I keep deleting and re-uploading a project download?

You can delete files from the download section if you accidentally uploaded the wrong file or the file is corrupted. You need to notice this problem fairly quickly, before too much time has passed or too many people have downloaded the file.

After a file has been released for some time, it becomes part of your project's history and can no longer be deleted. Offering archival downloads means that users can trust that the file will always be available from that URL. At that point, instead of deleting the file, you may only label it as "Deprecated", which removes it from the list of currently supported downloads.

Deprecated files still count toward your project download space quota. Rather than deleting content to manage your quota usage, please ask for more quota by following the instructions on the "New Download" page.

What other limits exist?

There are disk-space quota limits for both issue tracker attachments and total Subversion repository size, along with a limit on how many total projects you are able to create. If you hit these limits, please contact us via our Google Group or email google-code-hosting@googlegroups.com directly to discuss the situation.

How can I integrate my project blog?

You can use a gadget. Click Administer, then edit your project description to include:

<wiki:gadget url="http://google-code-feed-gadget.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/gadget.xml" up_feeds="http://google-code-featured.blogspot.com/atom.xml" width="780"  height="340" border="0" up_showaddbutton="0"/>

But, replace the up_feeds URL with a the XML feed for your blog. If you have more than one project blog, you can list multiple URLs, separated by vertical bars (|).

Why aren't you offering my favorite tool?

We want our collaborative development environment to be simple, fast, reliable, and scalable, so we only offer tools that are aligned with those goals. This way, we can manage and support the tools we offer in a scalable manner.

If you need more tools, you might choose to run them yourself on your own servers, or you might make use of individual tools that are offered by other project-hosting sites. You can loosely integrate with other tools and websites by linking to them from your project-summary page.

Issue Tracking

One of my issues is missing!!

It is not actually missing. Some projects that we host skipped one issue id value between January 28, 2009 and February 21, 2009. If it seems like one of your issues is missing, and the next issue was created in that time range, the problem is likely just that the "missing" issue id was never used.

Why build yet another issue-tracking tool?

An issue tracker is an application that users and developers use to maintain a database of software defects, change requests, technical-support requests, development tasks, and other issues that the project members must work to resolve. Since they're so central to each developer's daily work, many issue tracking systems have already been built. Most existing issue tracker tools force developers to follow a particular software development process by defining a set of fields, possible values, and workflow states for each issue. The result is often a complex tool that's difficult to use because it includes many fields and options that aren't applicable to a given issue.

In contrast, our issue tracker uses only a minimal set of fields, and offers users the ability to store the information that they need as labels. This approach is possible because it uses Google's free-text search technology to search on all issue metadata.

How do I browse project issues?

Visit the project and click the "Issues" tab. You will immediately see a list of all open issues in that project.

How do I search project issues?

Immediately under the "Issues" tab, there is a search box that can be used for searching. Each search takes place in a search context that is selected by a drop-down menu. By default, all searches only consider open issues; if you would like to search closed issues, select "All issues" from the search context drop-down menu.

You can quickly narrow your search by clicking on the issue list table headers and selecting a value from the "Show only" sub-menu.

Another way to search is to use the "Advanced Search" link under the "Issues" tab. This page helps you form a complex query. However, once you learn the query syntax, you can enter complex queries directly into the main search field. For more information on issue queries, click "Search Tips" under the "Issues" tab.

How do I file a project bug report?

Click "New Issue" under the "Issues" tab. Enter a one-line summary and a description of the problem that you encountered and the expected result. The description text field already has text that helps you enter a detailed bug report. If you are an owner or member of the project, you will also see more fields for the issue metadata.

How do I file a project feature request?

The issue tracker can be used for feature requests, support requests, or any other type of development task that a project needs to track. You can file a feature request by clicking "New Issue" and entering a summary and description. A feature request will not have "steps to reproduce", so you might want to change that to something more appropriate, like "use case steps".

Can I file an issue anonymously?

No. To prevent abuse and improve report quality, Google Code requires a Google Account to post new issues and comments. Anyone who does not have a Google account may sign up for one at no cost. After an issue report has been entered, it is viewable by anyone without the need to sign in.

How do I edit the issue metadata?

Only project owners and members can edit issue metadata. If you are an owner or member, you will see additional fields when entering a new issue or adding a comment. The drop-down auto-complete menu for each field will help you enter commonly used values. However, for the labels, you are free to enter new or uncommon labels simply by typing them.

What are issue labels? Why Priority-Medium?

Labels are simply strings that are meaningful to the project members, but that have no particular meaning to the issue tracker itself. For example, you could label an issue as "Hot" if you like.

When an issue label has a dash in it, e.g., "Priority-Medium", then that is interpreted as a key-value pair that can be used like a custom field. The prefix before the first dash is the key, and the part after it is the value. You can configure the issue list to show a column for any prefix. And, you can search for values within a specific custom field by using "prefix:value".

Can I change the set of labels offered in the auto-complete menu?

Project owners can configure the set of labels that are offered to members of a project. To edit the predefined labels, click the "Administer" tab and the "Issue tracking" sub-tab. Use the text fields to configure the set of issue statuses and labels that will be offered.

For example, if your project is building a graphics driver, maybe you would like to label some of your issues with Depth-16bit, Depth-24bit, and/or Depth-32bit.

What if someone types in a nonsense label or status?

Remember, only project owners and members can edit issue metadata. Usually, if someone in the project uses an unexpected status or label, it is because the issue itself is a special case that does not follow the normal workflow. The issue tracker shows a brief warning whenever an uncommon status or label is used. If some project member goes out of their way to enter a nonsensical label, you can always see who did it, change it back, and send them an email.

If there is a duplicate issue, how should the issue be triaged?

Sometimes users will file issues that have already been reported. When a duplicate issue is entered into the issue tracker, a project member or owner can mark that issue as a 'Duplicate'.

To do this set the status of the duplicate issue to 'Duplicate'. Setting the status as 'Duplicate' will prompt the user to enter the issue id of the original issue. Marking an issue as 'Duplicate' adds the stars and copies cc email addresses to the original issue. This also closes the duplicate issue.

How do I track when one issue is blocked on other issues?

On occasion, an issue cannot be fixed until another issue is fixed first. The project member or owner can track which issues the current issue is blocked on by adding the issue ids in the 'Blocked on' field.

How can I learn more about the issue tracker?

See the IssueTracker wiki page.

Project Wikis

What syntax are you using in the wiki?

Our wiki syntax is inspired by the MoinMoin wiki syntax, and is more or less a subset of it. We've found that MoinMoin is one of the most popular open source wikis and provides a clean syntax for users.

Specific examples of how to use the wiki syntax are shown in the "Wiki Markup Help" box on the right-hand side of the wiki page creation and editing pages.

Why are you not hosting an existing wiki system like MoinMoin, TWiki, or MediaWiki?

Most of the existing wiki products cannot scale to the size and concurrency that we expect, so we had to design one to work to our demands, using Google's infrastructure. In addition, we believe that tools are most useful when they are easy to use and well integrated into the collaborative development environment. So, we are offering a simple wiki that works well with our existing tools. If you find that your project needs some highly specialized formatting, you can link to Google Page Creator, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Groups, or other pages hosted elsewhere on the Internet.

What wiki features do you support?

We believe that simplicity helps people collaborate, so we have focused on the most commonly used content formatting features. We support layout of headings, paragraphs, bullet lists, numbered lists, block quotes, and blocks of code. Text phrases can be formatted with bold, italic, strikethrough, superscipt, subscript, or code font. WikiWords are automatically linked, and you can also link to URLs and customize the link text. We support very simple tables for display of data. Optional #summary and #labels lines at the top of each file specify metadata about the page. Our wiki does not support sub-pages, attachments, variables, or macros.

How do I update pages for my project?

Click on the Wiki tab of your project to see a list of all wiki pages. To add a new page, you must be a project owner or member; click on the "New Page" link in the toolbar under the main tabs. This will bring you to the wiki editor where you can add content and assign labels to your wiki page. To edit an existing page, first view the page, and then click "Edit this page" in the toolbar.

How do I edit a wiki page directly through subversion?

You can also add and edit pages directly through Subversion, since all wiki pages are stored in the /wiki/ directory in your project's Subversion repository. Most developers only check out the /trunk/ directory. To have /wiki/ in your working copy, you might use a command of the form: svn checkout https://PROJECTNAME.googlecode.com/svn/wiki/ PROJECTNAME-wiki --username USERNAME

Each wiki page is stored in a corresponding file in the repository's /wiki directory. E.g., a page named "UserGuide" would be stored in /wiki/UserGuide.wiki. You may edit, delete, or add wiki pages by editing, deleting, or adding files that fit that convention. The contents of a .wiki file should be plain text that follows the WikiSyntax. Other files and directories under /wiki are currently ignored.

What types of content is this intended for?

Project roadmaps, how-tos, installation notes, and documentation are great examples of potential wiki pages. Wiki pages are easy for project members to edit quickly and are easier to find than email threads, so use them for documents that your team will refer to and update often.

Who can add and edit pages to my wiki?

Only project members and owners can add and edit wiki pages for a particular project.

Where is the wiki content stored?

All wiki pages are stored in the /wiki/ directory of your project's Subversion repository, as files ending in .wiki (other files and subdirectories will be ignored). That means you can use a Subversion client and your favorite text editor to add and edit wiki pages.

Google Groups

What is a Google Group?

A Google Group is a mailing list hosted at groups.google.com. Each Google Group has an extensive web interface, but you are also perfectly welcome to use it as a plain-old mailing list.

Does creating a new project on Google Code automatically create a Google Group for me?

No. Google Code offers the ability to send issue tracker and Subversion commit emails to mailing lists of your choice, but it doesn't create those mailing lists for you.

How do I create a mailing list for my project?

You can visit Google Groups and create as many mailing lists as your project needs. We recommend that you create at least two lists: one for developer discussions and one to receive Subversion commit emails.

Can I use an existing mailing list with my project?

Sure. Just link to its existing web interface using a regular project link. If you have an existing mailing list for automated commit messages, enter its address in the form that is under the "Administer" tab.

How do I make my mailing list accept Subversion commit emails?

Simply configure your mailing list to accept posts from codesite-noreply@google.com. You can do this by adding the address to the "allowed posters" list, or by making that address a member of the list with no delivery.

Subversion

What version of Subversion do you use?

We currently use Subversion 1.5.4, made available via WebDAV.

Anonymous checkouts can be done via http://, while developers must use authenticated https:// to commit changes.

Do you have support for ViewVC or similar repository-browsing tools?

Support for tools such as ViewVC isn't implemented yet, but we do provide our own web-based source browsing. Source browsing can be accessed under the "Source" tab for each project, under the "Browse" sub-tab.

How can I make SVN serve HTML and images with the correct Content-Type?

You need to tell subversion what mime-type to use. Just use the command:

svn propset svn:mime-type 'text/html' FILENAME

svn propset svn:mime-type 'image/jpeg' FILENAME

For more info: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn.advanced.props.file-portability.html#svn.advanced.props.special.mime-type

It's also possible to configure your Subversion client to automatically set each file's mime-type. For example, by modifying ~/.subversion/config to resemble

[miscellany]
enable-auto-props = yes

[auto-props]
*.html = svn:mime-type=text/html

For more info: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch07.html#svn-ch-7-sect-1.3.2

How do I import my existing source code?

Just use the 'svn import' command. Note that this command only loads a single tree of code into your repository.

How do I import an existing Subversion repository?

To upload the history of an existing Subversion repository, use the svnsync tool that ships with Subversion 1.4. Run svnsync help to read more about this tool.

Note that your Google Code repository must be reset to revision 0 for this to work. Your project's Source tab will display instructions on how to reset the repository yourself. (Note: you must be a project owner to reset your own repository, and also to push code up with svnsync.)

Here's a sample transcript that demonstrates how you can push history from an existing repository (located at file:///my/repos) to your repository on Google Code:

  $ svnsync init --username YOURUSERNAME https://YOURPROJECT.googlecode.com/svn file:///path/to/localrepos
  Copied properties for revision 0.
  $ svnsync sync --username YOURUSERNAME https://YOURPROJECT.googlecode.com/svn
  Committed revision 1.
  Copied properties for revision 1.
  Committed revision 2.
  Copied properties for revision 2.
  [...]

When prompted for your password, use your googlecode.com password, which can be found on the settings tab of your profile page.

Running svnsync on a large repository will take a significant amount of time. If you are disconnected during the process, you may see the error message "svnsync: Couldn't get lock on destination repos after 10 attempts". If this happens, you can remove the lock yourself; see the "Locks" section of svnsync.txt.

How can I import a CVS repository into my project?

The cvs2svn tool is a well-established tool to convert CVS history to Subversion history. Use it to create a Subversion repository, and then use the svnsync to push the Subversion history up to your Google Code repository. (See "How do I import existing Subversion history?")

How do I download my Subversion history?

To download the history of your Google Code repository, use the svnsync tool that ships with Subversion 1.4. Run 'svnsync help' to read more about this tool. Note that your local repository must have an executable 'pre-revprop-change' hook script which allows revprop changes (or at least those of the form 'svnsync*'.) Here's a sample transcript that demonstrates how you can pull history from your Google Code repository to a local repository:

  $ svnadmin create localrepos
  $ emacs localrepos/hooks/pre-revprop-change # make it 'exit 0'
  $ chmod +x localrepos/hooks/pre-revprop-change
  $ svnsync init --username USERNAME file:///path/to/localrepos https://myproject.googlecode.com/svn
  Copied properties for revision 0.
  $ svnsync sync --username USERNAME file:///path/to/localrepos
  Committed revision 1.
  Copied properties for revision 1.
  Committed revision 2.
  Copied properties for revision 2.
  [...]

After you've done this once, you can continue to run the last 'svnsync sync' command to periodically pull down the latest commits and keep your local mirror up-to-date.

Yes. There are a number of Windows clients for Subversion: you can use the command-line client, though TortoiseSVN is a very popular client that integrates Subversion functionality directly into Windows Explorer. Another possibility is to use AnkhSVN, which is a Visual Studio plug-in that offers Subversion access within the IDE.

Can I set fine-grained path access controls in the Subversion repository?

No. While corporate software projects tend to revolve around fine-grained access control to source code, we don't think that this is the most productive practice for open source development. In an open source project, the code is entirely public and the developer community should be based on trust. If your community invites someone to be a project member, then it's a collective statement that your community trusts the person with write access to the repository. If the community feels that the person should only change certain portions of the source code, then that expectation should be made clear. If the new member violates this social contract, the community is free to expel the member and revert any unwanted commits.

Where do I get a password for committing to Subversion?

If you're an owner or member of a project, just look at your "Settings" tab of your profile page. It will display your googlecode.com password. This password is used for access to your project's Subversion repository and for command-line file uploads to your project's Downloads area. This password is not the same as the password that you use to access your project on the web.

Why is my Subversion password different from my Google Account password?

The default for many svn clients is to automatically cache the password on your local disk. Your Google Account password is much too valuable to expose in this manner. So while there is an inconvenience for users with clients that do not automatically cache the password, the risk it avoids in the other clients is worth it.

Why can't I set my own Subversion password?

For the reasons mentioned above, we would prefer this password to be thought of in the same way as a temporary password sent via email. It has a similar level of security in that it is potentially accessible by third-parties as plain text. Allowing users to set their own password is likely to encourage them to divulge their Google Account or other high risk passwords.

  Error validating server certificate for 'https://projectname.googlecode.com:443':
   - The certificate is not issued by a trusted authority. Use the
     fingerprint to validate the certificate manually!

...you should check that the "fingerprint" or "SHA1 fingerprint" given for the certificate is:

B1:3A:D5:38:56:27:52:9F:BA:6C:70:1E:A9:AB:4A:1A:8B:DA:FF:EC

If it is not, please email us at code-hosting@google.com.

Does Google own the code that I check into Subversion?

Hosting your code on Google Code doesn't change ownership of the code in any way.