Compiling A License

SoftwareShield System Feature Guide > Testing and Debugging Support > Compiling A License

## Compiling A License

This page describes a best practice approach to compiling and managing your license projects.

1. Create a folder somewhere in your project directory structure named "LICENSED_PROJECTS". Always save your license projects here. Create sub-directories if needed to separate individual license projects.

2. When you compile your license in this directory, the distributed license will be created in the same location inside a sub-directory named "Release". If you are using IronWrapping, the directory will also contain a complete copy of the IronWrapped program and any other files the IronWrap linker found in the Host Root Directory that were not embedded.

3. If you are not using IronWrapping, always do a "License Clean" before you make a change to your license project that effects any Alias Files or the Virgin Key. Even if you are using IronWrapping, you may wish to manually clean the machine if you move the Release Directory outside of your LPJ directory. If you make changes without doing a clean first, you could have problems as some Aliases may not corroborate when they should. Not to mention - forgetting to clean before you change these details may un-necessarily pollute your system. See Cleaning A Development Machine for details.

When you compile a license you should be aware that two files will be created (or overwritten if they previously existed). These files are a Distributed License File and a Programming Notes File. They are named according to the name you have assigned for the main license file (with the same extension you specified for the Distributed file and with an .html extension for the programming notes file).

Note that unlike the License Project File, the Distributed License File does not contain unnecessary information, is compressed and encrypted using the BlowFish algorithm.

### More Information

For help on actually compiling your license project, see Compile Distributable License in the SoftwareShield License Manager Reference.

For help on actually performing the Clean function on your development machine, see Clean License in the SoftwareShield License Manager.

For help on understanding what happens during a "clean", see Cleaning A Development Machine in this feature reference.