The problem of transmitter adaptation in the form of adapting the spreading sequences and the transmission powers of different users for a multicode direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) system is considered. Particular attention is given to a distributed algorithm, which updates each pair of transmitter and receiver without information from other users. The transmitter adaptation problem and the algorithm are studied from the viewpoint of a single user, as well as the viewpoint of the whole system. The algorithm is shown to give either the optimal sequences or a choice of sequences that is close to the optimal one. Simulation results show that major improvement in performance can be obtained with the proposed transmission adaptation scheme. The effect of restricting the choice of sequences to polyphase sequences is also considered.