Looking before leaping: Creating a software registry

Understand

What lessons can be learned from examining numerous efforts to create a repository or directory of scientist-written software for a discipline? Astronomy has seen a number of efforts to build such a resource, one of which is the Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL).

• The ASCL (ascl.net) was founded in 1999, had a period of dormancy, and was restarted in 2010.
• When taking over responsibility for the ASCL in 2010, the new editor sought to answer the opening question, hoping this would better inform the work to be done.
• We also provide specific steps the ASCL is taking to try to improve code sharing and discovery in astronomy and share recent improvements to the resource.