TA Guide

Note: These instructions are optimized for OSX. If you would like help setting up a grading environment on a Windows or Linux machine, contact Eric Campbell.

Note: If anything in these instructions is unclear or inaccurate, please post an issue, submit a PR, or contact us

Configuring your GitHub Account

First, visit GitHub, and create an account if you do not have one already. You now have two options for enabling git access to your account, ssh and https. Please do not enable two-factor authentication unless you intend on using ssh to access your account.

Using `https` authentication

This method will ask for your GitHub username and password each time you access a remote repository (if you are on a Mac, you should be able to add these credentials to your keychain).

This method requires no setup. When you clone the repositories, simply copy the HTTPS clone link in the right side-bar.

Using `ssh` (recommended)

This method will require you to set up RSA keys on your computer and on GitHub to enable unqueried access to your repositories. If you already have ssh keys, skip step 1. If you have set up GitHub ssh access for your current machine, you may skip all the steps below. 1. Open your bash terminal and in your home directory type ssh-keygen followed by the return key (it is recommended to accept the default settings). 2. Login to GitHub, navigate here and click on Add SSH key 3. Provide a name in the title field to identify your device and copy the entire contents of your $HOME/.ssh/rsa_pub file into the Key box 4. Push, pull, and clone freely.

Setting up your grading environment

Configuring Eclipse

Install the Latest Distribution (recommended)

Visit this link to view and download the appropriate distro of Eclipse Mars.

Install Plugins to Existing Eclipse installation

Follow the instructions to install the EGit plugin, and use your favorite bash terminal instead of Eclipse TM for the following instructions.

Selecting a workspace

When you open Eclipse, you will be asked to specify a workspace. Please ensure that your workspace is in a different directory from the one housing your git repositories. Not following this instruction will result in unpredictable behavior.

Using the EGit GUI

Eclipse allows you to customize different sets of toolbars for different development modes. They call these different sets of toolbars “Perpectives”. If you would like to include the EGit plugin effectively, you will need to customize you current plugin. Navigate to Window > Perspective > Customize Perspective... A dialog box entiled “Customize Perspective - Java” will appear. For each tab in the dialog box, click the box next to each instance of Git or Git Navigation Actions.

Cloning the repositories

The following bash commands can be run in Eclipse TM or your favorite bash terminal.

In order to set up the repositories of the students you will be grading, you will need to clone each students submission repo - each url should conform to the following pattern:

https://www.github.com/pomona-cs051/cecil-sagehen_fa2015
https://www.github.com/pomona-cs051/fname-lname_fa2015
https://www.github.com/pomona-cs051/roonil-wazlib_fa2015

To clone each repository, open the Eclipse TM plugin (or your preferred bash shell) and type

cd /path/to/grading/directory

This directory houses your git repositories and must be different from your workspace.

For each student’s lab you wish to grade, type

git clone https://www.github.com/pomona-cs051/cecil-sagehen_fa2015

This will create a new directory called cecil-sagehen_fa2015 and will create a local copy of the remote repository (the default name of this remote is origin).

Since this can be a rather tedious process, this script will do it for you, otherwise you can use the rubygem teachers_pet to perform the same functionality.

Ideally cloning only occurs once per semester for each student’s code. As part of the grading workflow, TAs will see the repos in the EGit window. After they have pulled in the new branches and commits from students, they will need to right click and import in the EGit window on the student repo to switch to grading that student’s code.

Note: For simplicity, we recommend grading the same lab section throughout the semester, since this process will need to be repeated for each additional lab section you will grade.

Another option is to clone all of the student repositories at the beginning of the semester.

Importing your projects into Eclipse

Once you have configured Eclipse to use EGit and TM, and cloned the repositories you wish to grade, you will need to make Eclipse aware of your repositories so you can import them into your workspace to test functionality. 1. Visit Import > Git > Projects from Git + If you are given the option to select “Existing local repository”, do so 2. Since you have already cloned the repositories, click Add… 3. In the Directory box, type the absolute path to your grading directory and hit Search. Select each grading repository and hit OK or Finish. 4. In the Git Repositories Window ctrl+click on the remote respository you wish to import and hit import. Follow the guide to import the project to your workspace > Note: you will need to import each repository into the workspace to test it.

Managing your repositories

Each time you wish to grade a lab, you will need to fetch the latest copy of the remote branches of each repository. It is simple to cd into each repository and run git fetch, git pull --all, or your preferred update command. However this is tedious, especially if you have a lab of 20-30 students. The solution to this is MyRepos, or mr for short. This command-line tool reduces this tedium to a single line, mr update.

Getting started with `mr`

To install mr, visit this link and click on Download. Otherwise if you have homebrew installed, you can run brew install mr in your home directory. Once it has been installed, cd into each repository and type mr register. This will add the repository to mr’s repo registry. Then, in any parent directory, you can call mr update (or mr up for short) to update each repository.

What does `mr update` do?

The default git command that is run by mr update is git pull --all. Which fetches all remotes and merges -ff-only with local branches set up to track remotes. It does not create a local copy of each remote branch. To modify the git commands run by mr update, you can modify the update field of the $HOME/.mrconfig file – this can be specific to a repository or global. You can also define additional mr commands in this file.

How to Grade for CS051 + Git

To grade a student’s assignment, follow the above instructions to test the code’s functionality. Then, navigate to their submission repository on GitHub. Open the Pull Requests tab and click on the PR for the current Lab. Comment your grade for their functionality. The Files Changed tab will allow you to leave in-line comments on their code. Be sure that you leave your final grade in a comment on the Conversations Tab. Once you have finished grading, click Merge and record their grade in the Google Doc. Do not delete the branch.

If a student has questions or concerns about their grade, they will be encouraged to leave comments and questions about your comments. If you are unsure about how to grade someone’s code, you can always tag another TA or Professor in an inline comment.

Note: It is currently undecided if/how Git will be incorporated into the students’ grades. If you have suggestions, please join the discussion.

Course Assistants: TA Guide