cs102-F2020-lab1-starter

Table of Contents

• Objectives
• Introduction
• Continuous Learning
• Assignment Reminders
• Configuring Git and GitHub
• Accessing the Assignment
• Laboratory Assignment Tasks
  • Unscrambling the Markdown Files
  • Unscrambling the Python Program
  • Reflecting on the Laboratory Assignment
• Automated Checks with GatorGrader
• Assignment Assessment
• Advance Feedback on an Assignment
• Discussion of a Graded Assignment
• Additional Resources
  • System Commands
  • Using Docker
  • Using the Docker Shell
  • Downloading Project Updates
  • Using GitHub Actions
  • System Requirements
  • Reporting Problems
  • Receiving Assistance

Objectives

The learning objectives for this laboratory assignment are as follows:

• To configure Git and GitHub on your laptop and on the GitHub servers
• To transfer files from your laptop to your GitHub repository
• To use your text editor to manipulate code blocks in a Markdown file
• To use your text editor to manipulate code blocks in a Python file
• To use a Docker container to run the automated checks performed by GatorGrader
• To use a terminal window to run a Python program and observe its output

Introduction

Designed for use with GitHub Classroom and GatorGrader, this repository contains a laboratory assignment for an introductory computer science class that uses the Python programming language. The source code and technical writing for this assignment must pass tests set by the GatorGrader tool. When you use the git commit command to transfer your source code to your GitHub repository, GitHub Actions will initialize a build of your assignment, checking to see if it meets all of the requirements. If both your source code and writing meet all of the established requirements, then you will see a green ✔ in the listing of commits in GitHub. If your submission does not meet the requirements, a red ❌ will appear instead. Please note that, at the option of the course instructor, some checks may be run in GitHub Actions that are not run locally by the GatorGrader tool.

Continuous Learning

If you have not done so already, please read all of the relevant GitHub Guides that explain how to use many of the features that GitHub provides. In particular, please make sure that you have read the following GitHub guides: Mastering Markdown, Hello World, and Documenting Your Projects on GitHub. Each of these guides will help you to understand how to use both GitHub and GitHub Classroom.

Students who want to learn more about how to use Docker should review the Docker Documentation. Students are also encouraged to review the documentation for their text editor, which is available at VS Code. You should also review the Git documentation to learn more about how to use the Git command-line client. In addition to talking with the instructor and technical leader for your course, students are encouraged to search StackOverflow for answers to their technical questions.

As outlined in the course schedule in the course planning repository, students should also read all of the assigned readings for up to and including the week of the semester on which this laboratory assignment was assigned.

Assignment Reminders

• Follow each step carefully. Slowly read each sentence in this document, making sure that you precisely follow each instruction. Take notes about each step that you attempt, recording your questions and ideas and the challenges that you faced. If you are stuck, then please tell a technical leader or the course instructor what assignment step you recently completed.

• Regularly ask and answer questions. Please log into Slack at the start of the laboratory session and then join the appropriate channel. If you have a question about one of the steps in an assignment, then you can post it to the designated channel, discussing your questions through both Slack and the Google Meet designated for the class.

• Store your files in GitHub. Starting with this laboratory assignment, you will be responsible for storing all of your files (e.g., Python source code and Markdown-based writing) in a Git repository using GitHub Classroom. Please verify that you have saved your source code in your Git repository by using git status to ensure that everything is updated. You can see if your assignment submission meets the established correctness requirements by using the provided checking tools on your local computer and by checking the commits in GitHub.

• Keep all of your files. Don't delete your programs, output files, and written reports after you submit them through GitHub; you will need them again when you study for the course assessments and work on the other laboratory, practical, and technical challenge assignments.

• Hone your technical writing skills. Computer science assignments require to you write technical documentation and descriptions of your experiences when completing each task. Take extra care to ensure that your writing is interesting and both grammatically and technically correct, remembering that computer scientists must effectively communicate and collaborate with their team members and the student technical leaders and course instructor.

• Review the Honor Code on the syllabus. While you may discuss your assignments with others, copying source code or technical writing is a violation of Allegheny College's Honor Code.

Configuring Git and GitHub

During this laboratory assignment and the subsequent laboratory and practical assignments, we will securely communicate with the GitHub servers that will host all of the project templates and your submitted deliverables. In this assignment, you will perform all of the steps to configure your account on GitHub and you will start your first assignment using GitHub Classroom. As you will be required to use Git, an industry standard tool, in all of the remaining laboratory and practical assignments and during the class sessions, you should keep a record of all of the steps that you complete and the challenges that you face. You may chat with the course instructor or one of the technical leaders if you are not able to complete a certain step or if you are not sure how to proceed.

• If you do not already have a GitHub account, then please go to the GitHub web site and create one, making sure that you use your allegheny.edu email address so that you can join GitHub as a student at an accredited educational institution. You are also encouraged to sign up for GitHub's "Student Developer Pack" at Student Developer Pack, qualifying you to receive free software development tools. Additionally, please add a description of yourself and an appropriate professional photograph to your GitHub profile. Unless your username is taken, you should also pick your GitHub username to be the same as Allegheny's Google-based email account. Now, in the #labs channel of our Slack workspace, please type on one line your full name, allegheny.edu email address, and your new GitHub username.

• If you have never done so before, you must use the ssh-keygen program to create secure-shell keys that you can use to support your communication with GitHub. But, to start, this task requires you to type commands in a program that is known as a terminal. Your terminal program will vary depending on your operating system. For instance, if you are running Linux, you can click on an icon that contains the > symbol or press the "Super" key, start typing the word "terminal", and then select that program. Another way to open a terminal involves typing the key combination <Ctrl>-<Alt>-t. On the Windows operating system you may want to use the "Command Prompt" or the "Power Shell" and on MacOS you can use "Terminal". Your terminal will display as a box into which you can type commands. For the next step, you may need to separately install ssh-keygen if it is not on your laptop.

• Now that you have started the terminal, you will need to type the ssh-keygen command in it. Follow the prompts to create your keys and save them in the default directory. That is, you should press "Enter" after you are prompted to "Enter file in which to save the key ... :" and then type your selected passphrase whenever you are prompted to do so. Please note that a "passphrase" is like a password that you will type when you need to prove your identify to GitHub. What files does "ssh-keygen" produce? Where does this program store these files by default? Do you have any questions about how to create your SSH keys?

• Once you have created your ssh keys, you need to upload them to GitHub. First, you must log into GitHub and look in the right corner for an account avatar with a down arrow. Click on this link and then select the "Settings" option. Now, scroll down until you find the "SSH and GPG keys" label on the left, click to create a "New SSH key", and then upload your ssh key to GitHub. You can copy your SSH key to the clipboard by going to the terminal and typing a command like cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub command and then highlighting this output. When you are completing this step in your terminal, please make sure that you only highlight the letters and numbers in your key — if you highlight any extra symbols or spaces then this step may not work correctly. Then, paste this into the GitHub text field in your web browser.

• Again, when you are completing these steps, please make sure that you take careful notes about the inputs, outputs, and behavior of each command. If there is something that you do not understand, then please ask the course instructor or the technical leader about it.

• Since this is your first laboratory assignment and you are still learning how to use the appropriate software, don't become frustrated if you make a mistake. Instead, use your mistakes as an opportunity for learning both about the necessary technology and the background and expertise of the other students in the class, the technical leaders, and the course instructor. Remember, you can use Slack to talk with the instructor by typing @gkapfham in a channel.

Accessing the Assignment

To access this assignment, you should go into the #announcements channel in our Slack workspace and find the announcement that provides a link for it. Copy this link and paste it into your web browser. Now, you should accept the laboratory assignment and see that GitHub Classroom created a new GitHub repository for you to access the assignment's starting materials and to store the completed version of your assignment. Specifically, to access your new GitHub repository for this assignment, please click the green "Accept" button and then click the link that is prefaced with the label "Your assignment has been created here". If you accepted the assignment and correctly followed these steps, you should have created a GitHub repository with a name like Allegheny-Computer-Science-102-Fall-2020/computer-science-102-fall-2020-lab-1-gkapfham. Unless you provide the course instructor with documentation of the extenuating circumstances that you are facing, not accepting the assignment means that you automatically receive a failing grade for all of its components.

Before you move to the next step of this laboratory assignment, please make sure that you read all of the content on the web site for your new GitHub repository, paying close attention to the technical details about the commands that you will type and the output that your program must produce. Now you are ready to download the starting materials to your laboratory computer. Click the "Clone or download" button and, after ensuring that you have selected "Clone with SSH", please copy this command to your clipboard. At this point, you can open a new terminal window and type the command mkdir cs102F2020. To enter into this directory you should now type cd cs102F2020. Next, you can type the either ls (on either MacOS or Linux) or dir (on Windows 10 Pro or Windows 10 Enterprise) and see that there are no files or directories inside of this directory. By typing git clone in your terminal and then pasting in the string that you copied from the GitHub site you will "download" all of the code for this assignment. For instance, if the course instructor ran the git clone command in the terminal, it would look like:

git clone [email protected]:Allegheny-Computer-Science-102-F2020/computer-science-102-fall-2020-lab-1-gkapfham.git

After this command finishes, you can use cd to change into the new directory. If you want to "go back" one directory from your current location, then you can type the command cd ... Finally, please continue to use the cd and ls commands to explore the files that you automatically downloaded from GitHub. If one of the aforementioned commands does not work correctly, then it is possible that your terminal window is not up-to-date or not configured correctly. In this case, please share your specific error messages with the instructor, ultimately working to master the use of terminal commands. What files and directories do you see? What do you think is their purpose? Spend some time exploring, telling your discoveries to a student technical leader.

Laboratory Assignment Tasks

Unscrambling the Markdown Files

If you look in the learning-objectives directory you will see that it contains the two Markdown files that feature the learning objectives for this course. You can find the correct version of these files in the Computer Science 102 Course Planning Repository. If you carefully inspect these files in your text editor, you will find that they are no longer in the correct order. Your task for this phase of the assignment is to "unscramble" the content in these two Markdown files so that they look the same as the content in the aforementioned course planning repository.

Unscrambling the Python Program

If you look in the src directory you will see that it contains a program called display_course_name.py. This program is supposed to produce the following output when you are in the directory for this laboratory assignment and you run it in the terminal window with either the command python3 src/display_course_name.py or python src/display_course_name.py. However, the lines of code in the program are no longer in the correct order and thus they do not produce the desired output. Your task for this phase of the assignment is to "unscramble" the content in this Python program so that it produces the following output.

___  _ ____ ____ ____ ____ ___ ____
|  \ | [__  |    |__/ |___  |  |___
|__/ | ___] |___ |  \ |___  |  |___

____ ___ ____ _  _ ____ ___ _  _ ____ ____ ____
[__   |  |__/ |  | |     |  |  | |__/ |___ [__
___]  |  |  \ |__| |___  |  |__| |  \ |___ ___]

Reflecting on the Laboratory Assignment

Once you have finished both of the previous technical tasks, use your text editor to answer all of the questions in the writing/reflection.md file. For instance, you should provide the output of the Python program in a fenced code block, explain the meaning of the three provided commands, and answer all of the other questions about your experiences in completing this laboratory assignment.

Automated Checks with GatorGrader

In addition to meeting all of the requirements outlined in this assignment sheet, your submission must pass the following checks that GatorGrader automatically assesses:

If GatorGrader's automated checks pass correctly, the tool will produce the output like the following in addition to returning a zero exit code (which you can access by typing the command echo $?). You will need to run GatorGrader in a Docker container by following the steps in the Using Docker section.

• The command output has exactly 6 lines
• The command python3 src/display_course_name.py executes correctly
• The display_course_name.py in src has at least 3 single-line Python comment(s)
• The display_course_name.py in src has at least 4 multiple-line Python comment(s)
• The display_course_name.py in src has exactly 0 of the TODO fragment
• The file display_course_name.py exists in the src directory
• The file mathematical-communication.md exists in the learning-objectives directory
• The file python-programming.md exists in the learning-objectives directory
• The file reflection.md exists in the writing directory
• The mathematical-communication.md in learning-objectives has at least 6 of the list tag
• The mathematical-communication.md in learning-objectives has exactly 1 of the heading tag
• The python-programming.md in learning-objectives has at least 7 of the list tag
• The python-programming.md in learning-objectives has exactly 1 of the heading tag
• The reflection.md in writing has at least 300 word(s) in total
• The reflection.md in writing has exactly 0 of the Add Your Name Here fragment
• The reflection.md in writing has exactly 1 of the code_block tag
• The reflection.md in writing has exactly 1 of the list tag
• The reflection.md in writing has exactly 3 of the code tag
• The reflection.md in writing has exactly 6 of the heading tag
• The repository has at least 5 commit(s)

        ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
        ┃ Passed 20/20 (100%) of checks for cs100-F2020-lab1! ┃
        ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Assignment Assessment

Taking inspiration from the principles of specification-based grading, the grade that a student receives on a laboratory assignment will be based on whether or not it meets the standards for technical work in the fields of software engineering and discrete structures. Instead of receiving a single numerical or letter grade for this assignment, your grade will have the following components:

• Percentage of Correct GatorGrader Checks Ranging Between 0 and 100: Your submitted Python program must pass all of GatorGrader's checks by, for instance, ensuring that it produces the correct output and has all of the required characteristics. Your technical writing must pass all of GatorGrader's checks about, for instance, the length of its output and its use of the required Markdown language features for technical writing. For this component of a laboratory assignment's grade, your work will receive a percentage, ranging from 0 to 100, that corresponds to the percentage of GatorGrader checks that automatically pass inside of a GitHub Actions build.

• GitHub Actions Build Status of Either ✔ or ❌: Since additional checks on the Python source code and/or technical writing are encoded in GitHub Action workflows and, moreover, all of the GatorGrader checks are also run in GitHub Actions, your work will receive a checkmark grade if the last before-the-deadline build in GitHub Actions passes and a ✔ appears in the GitHub commit log instead of an ❌. The build status reported by GitHub Actions will only be a ✔ if the source code and technical writing in the GitHub repository pass all of both the GatorGrader checks and the additional checks.

• Technical Writing Mastery of Either ✔ or ❌: Students will also receive a ✔ grade when the responses to the technical writing questions presented in the writing/reflection.md reveal a mastery of technical writing skills. To receive a checkmark grade, the submitted writing should have correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, and formatting in addition to following the rules of the Markdown language. Your work will receive a ✔ grade for this component if the build report from GitHub Actions reveals that there are no detected mistakes in the technical writing.

• Technical Knowledge and Skill Mastery of Either ✔ or ❌: Students will also receive a checkmark grade when the GitHub repository reveals that they have mastered all of the technical knowledge and skills developed during the completion of the laboratory assignment. As a part of this grade, the instructor will assess aspects of the project including, but not limited to, the use of effective Python source code comments, correct Git commit messages, and accurate responses to the technical writing questions.

Advance Feedback on an Assignment

Students who wish to receive feedback on their work for any course assignment should first open an issue on the issue tracker for their assignment's GitHub repository, giving an appropriate title and description for the type of feedback that you would like the course instructor to provide. After creating this issue, you will see that GitHub has created a unique web site that references it. To alert the course instructor to the fact that the issue was created and that you want feedback on your work, please send it to him by a Slack direct message at least 24 hours in advance of the project's due date. After the instructor responds to the issue, please resolve all of the stated concerns and participate in the discussion until the issue is resolved and ultimately marked as closed.

Discussion of a Graded Assignment

Students who wish to receive feedback on their work for any graded course assignment should leave question in the same region of Github where the course instructor submitted the assignment's grade. For example, if the instructor submits your grade to a pull request in your repository for a laboratory assignment, then you should ask questions about your grade in that pull request, bearing in mind the need to @-mention the course instructor in the body of your comment. Students can continue to discuss the graded assignment with the course instructor until they understand all the technical topics that were the focus of the particular assignment.

Additional Resources

System Commands

This project invites students to enter system commands into a terminal window. This assignment uses Docker to deliver programs, such as gradle and the source code and packages needed to run GatorGrader, to a students' computer, thereby eliminating the need for a programmer to install them on their development workstation. Individuals who do not want to install Docker can optionally install of the programs mentioned in the Project Requirements section of this document.

Using Docker

Once you have installed Docker Desktop, with MacOS and Linux you can use the following docker run command to start gradle grade as a containerized application, using the DockaGator Docker image available on DockerHub.

docker run --rm --name dockagator \
  -v "$(pwd)":/project \
  -v "$HOME/.dockagator":/root/.local/share \
  gatoreducator/dockagator

The aforementioned command will use "$(pwd)" (i.e., the current working directory) as the project directory and "$HOME/.dockagator" as the cached GatorGrader directory. Please note that both of these directories must exist, although only the project directory must contain something. Generally, the project directory should contain the source code and technical writing for this assignment, as provided to a student by the instructor through GitHub. Additionally, the cache directory should not contain anything other than directories and programs created by DockaGator, thus ensuring that they are not otherwise overwritten during the completion of the assignment. To ensure that the previous command will work correctly, you should create the cache directory by running the command mkdir $HOME/.dockagator on the MacOS and Linux operating systems. However, if you are using the Windows operating system then you will instead need to type the command mkdir %HomeDrive%%HomePath%/.dockagator. Finally, if the above docker run command does not work correctly on the Windows operating system, you may need to instead run the following command to adapt to the differences in the cmd terminal window:

docker run --rm --name dockagator \
  -v "%cd%:/project" \
  -v "%HomeDrive%%HomePath%/.dockagator:/root/.local/share" \
  gatoreducator/dockagator

Here are some additional commands that you may need to run when using Docker:

• docker info: display information about how Docker runs on your workstation
• docker images: show the Docker images installed on your workstation
• docker container list: list the active images running on your workstation
• docker system prune: remove many types of "dangling" components from your workstation
• docker image prune: remove all "dangling" docker images from your workstation
• docker container prune: remove all stopped docker containers from your workstation
• docker rmi $(docker images -q) --force: remove all docker images from your workstation

Using the Docker Shell

Since the above docker run command uses a Docker images that, by default, runs gradle grade and then exits the Docker container, you may want to instead run the following command so that you enter an "interactive terminal" that will allow you to repeatedly run commands within the Docker container. Don't forget that, if you are using the Windows operating system, then you will need to use a different command to run Docker, as explained previously in this document.

docker run -it --rm --name dockagator \
  -v "$(pwd)":/project \
  -v "$HOME/.dockagator":/root/.local/share \
  gatoreducator/dockagator /bin/bash

Once you have typed this command, you can use the GatorGrader tool in the Docker container by typing the command gradle grade in your terminal. Running this command will produce a lot of output that you should carefully inspect. If GatorGrader's output shows that there are no mistakes in the assignment, then your source code and writing are passing all of the automated baseline checks. However, if the output indicates that there are mistakes, then you will need to understand what they are and then try to fix them.

To run one of these commands, you must be in the main (i.e., "home base") directory for this assignment where the build.gradle file is located.

Downloading Project Updates

If GatorGrader's maintainers push updates to this sample assignment and you received it through GitHub Classroom and you would like to also receive these updates, then you can type this command in the main directory for this assignment:

git remote add download [email protected]:Allegheny-Computer-Science-102-F2020/cs102-F2020-lab1-starter/

You should only need to type this command once; running the command additional times may yield an error message but will not negatively influence the state of your Git repository. Now, you are ready to download the updates provided by the GatorGrader maintainers by typing this command:

git pull download master

This second command can be run whenever the maintainers needs to provide you with new source code for this assignment. However, please note that, if you have edited the files that we updated, running the previous command may lead to Git merge conflicts. If this happens, you may need to manually resolve them with the help of the instructor or a student technical leader. Finally, please note that the Gradle plugin for GatorGrader will automatically download the newest version of GatorGrader.

Using GitHub Actions

This assignment uses GitHub Actions to automatically run GatorGrader and additional checking programs every time you commit to your GitHub repository. The checking will start as soon as you have accepted the assignment — thus creating your own private repository — and the course instructor and/or GitHub enables GitHub Actions on it. If you do not see either a yellow ● or a green ✔ or a red ❌ in your listing of commits, then please ask the instructor to see whether or not GitHub Actions was correctly enabled.

System Requirements

This assignment was developed to work with the following software and versions:

• Docker Desktop
• Operating Systems
  • Linux
  • MacOS
  • Windows 10 Pro
  • Windows 10 Enterprise
• Programming Language Tools
  • Gradle 6.6
  • MDL 0.5.0
  • Python 3.7 or 3.8

Reporting Problems

If you have found a problem with this assignment's provided source code or documentation, then you can go to the Computer Science 102 Fall 2020 Planning Repository and raise an issue. If you have found a problem with the GatorGrader tool and the way that it checks your assignment, then you can also raise an issue in that repository. To ensure that your issue is properly resolved, please provide as many details as is possible about the problem that you experienced. Individuals who find, and use the appropriate GitHub issue tracker to correctly document, a mistake in any aspect of this assignment will receive extra credit towards their grade for the course.

Receiving Assistance

If you are having trouble completing any part of this project, then please talk with either the course instructor or a student technical leader during the course session. Alternatively, you may ask questions in the Slack workspace for this course. Finally, you can schedule a meeting during the course instructor's office hours.