For this project, you will write a story. More importantly, you will set up the VM, GitHub, and Travis infrastructure necessary for future course projects.
Important
Even though the project itself is trivial, it is important that you read this entire document carefully, as everything here applies to future projects as well.
Create a GitHub account if you don't already have one. Make sure your GitHub profile uses your real name so that we know who to give points to :).
Go to the GitHub Education discount page and request a free individual student account. This request should be granted almost instantaneously (check your email). Let the course staff know if there are any problems.
If you feel comfortable with git (e.g. used for a previous course or job), feel free to skip this.
Otherwise, you would benefit (both in this course and in future coursework, research, and/or jobs) by learning some git. Github offers an interactive tutorial, and you can also just search for "git tutorial".
Download the CS 263 VM (vm263.ova) from the "Files" section of the Canvas site. Then, import the VM into a virtualization platform. We strongly recommend and only officially support VirtualBox, for which instructions are provided below. If you choose to use another platform, you are responsible for making sure the configuration is functionally equivalent to the below setup instructions.
This guide is for VirtualBox 5.1.22, although it will probably work for other VirtualBox versions.
Having set up your VM, you may now start it by clicking "Start". You may choose to access it via either the VM's console or SSH. The username is httpd and the password is 263.
For SSH, executing ssh httpd@192.168.26.3 should work.
Everything below assumes you are logged into httpd on the VM.
Caution!
The httpd user is part of the admin group, which has full sudo privileges. However, you should not run any apt-get command yet, as the first (real) project is very sensitive to the installed libraries. We will let you know when it is safe to use apt-get.
Feel free to import your favorite dotfiles (e.g. .vimrc, .gitconfig, not to mention all those miscellaneous bash dotfiles).
Click on the provided GitHub Classroom assignment link, login via GitHub if necessary, and click "Accept assignment".
Now it is time to clone the repository. Go to https://github.com/harvard-cs263/write-a-story-<YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME>, copy the URL (make sure it begins with https://), and run in your VM:
cd git clone <repo_url> write-a-story/
Tip
This command and each subsequent Git command will ask you for your username and password, which might get annoying. If you'd like to avoid this, you might want to consider credential helpers.
Alternatively, you can clone and interact with repositories on the VM using existing SSH keys on your host computer:
Caution!
For all projects, you may commit and push your changes at your leisure, as long as you do not push to master. If you feel you've messed up your git repository contact the TFs for help.
All assignments come with a pre_setup.sh script. Execute this script before starting each assignment, including this one!
For all assignments, all of your work must committed to a non-master branch. Specifically, commits should be committed and pushed to the submission branch. You should not (and should not be able to) push commits to master.
To summarize: run the following after cloning the repository:
cd write-a-story ./pre_setup.sh git checkout -b submission
Caution!
For all projects, trying to modify or otherwise game the test cases will result in a grade of zero and academic dishonesty sanctions. Contact the course staff if you encounter issues with the tests.
As promised, the project itself is trivial. While you should feel free to unleash your inner Shakespeare, for this project you simply need to create a file named story.txt that is non-empty. You can "test" your "solution" by running make test.
In order to submit your assignment you will need to add the new file, commit, and then push the changes to submission. You should be able to do this with the following commands:
git add story.txt git commit -m"commit msg" git push origin submission
After pushing to your branch, click the "Compare & pull request" button on your repository's GitHub page. Then, click on "Create pull request" to submit your work! The title can be whatever, and the comment can be left blank (or non-blank if you have a note for the grader).
If you need to edit your submission before the deadline, just commit and push your new changes to this branch of your repository. The original pull request will be automatically updated with those commits (of course, be sure to check the GitHub pull request page to verify).
Ensure that Travis's automatic checks on your pull request run and pass. You can find the details of a Travis build by clicking on "Details" then "The build".
Caution!
Do not click "Merge pull request" after submitting, as this will modify the master branch. We will merge your pull request when grading.
Caution!
The deadlines for all assignments are on Canvas. Deadlines are enforced to the minute; the last commit before the deadline will be considered the submission. The course late policy is a 10% deduction per 8 hours of lateness.
Note that the Travis tests can take a while, and no testing-related extensions will be granted.
"Automated" grading means we will assign points based on the result of the Travis test case(s).
| Criteria | Points | Grading method |
|---|---|---|
| story.txt | 100 | Automated |