| Date | |
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| TODO | Assigned |
| TODO | Due |
| Status |  |
The Reporter
31 August 2022
(Andra) — For months now, the neighborhoods in the suburbs of term-world have been ghost towns. The once-bustling streets of communities like Andra and Folivoria have been host to little more than the occasional tumbleweed ever since local property owner The Landlord raised rent rates to untenable levels in an attempt to only bring the best and brightest (and wealthiest) to our fair term-world.
In our exclusive interview with The Landlord, it was revealed that his able assistant The Intern argued that even properties with rock-bottom rent rates bring in more bacon than abandoned abodes. So, in a move that could only be called "inspired," "obvious," or maybe even "capitalistically altruistic," The Landlord is slashing rates to less than a tenth of what they once were. That's right, you'll no longer need a six-figure income to call one of these fine houses with three-figure square footage yours.
Word must've gotten out; nearly fifty new tenants have applied to live in the six neighborhoods owned and maintained by The Landlord. Only time will tell what these wide-eyed tenants will bring to term-world...
In this activity, we cover:
- basic
term-worldcommands - navigating using your "terminal"
- file management best practices
- executing Python files
- an introduction to using the
gitprotocol - an overview of the GitHub platform
The requirements of this exercise center on your ability to find your way around your house, unpack some boxes, remembering where you put things you unpack. You'll solve a few small puzzles in order to complete your lease and verify that your house is outfitted and working correctly.
The activities for your first week in term-world all take place in your house. In order to access this material, you will first need to set up an SSH key. While we'll cover this in the opening days of class, here's a (long-ish) video detailing the process should you need a reminder later:
Once your SSH key is set up, you'll need to navigate to the house folder by running this command in your terminal window:
cd ~/house
cd is short for "change directory," a command which moves you around the terminal to the various physical locations of term-world. The above command takes you forward, though you can also go backward by using two "dots" (..) after your cd command instead of the name of the folder you want to go to. For example:
cd ..
takes us back to the folder we were just in. You can always tell where you are by looking at your command prompt -- the text before the blocky cursor that indicates where you're typing. The following prompt:
user server location
|----| |--------| |
dluman@term-world:~$
tells us that we're, well, ourselves (for me, it's dluman) on the term-world server, at the ~ location (think of ~ as a shortcut to your home directory, which is different from your house).
This takes some time to adjust to; getting moved in to your house will give you more than enough practice.
Right now, the house is pretty empty. The output of another command, ls will show you this. Like cd, ls is short for something. In this case: "list." Given that there's nothing there, it would be helpful to have stuff. Any time you want to list a directory (i.e., see what's there) just type ls and press Enter.
If you've navigated away from your house folder, cd back to it. However, if you're there, we can populate your house with your things. They're currently stored on GitHub, the platform we use to do something called "versioning" our files. As with everything in our time in term-world, we'll get plenty more experience with the customs and protocols of living in our digital society.
Once you're in your house folder, locate the Version Control menu at the right side of your VS Code screen and locate the Pull option:
As with every operation we do with GitHub, you'll need to provide the password for the SSH key we made earlier. This is a regular feature of our work; you'll get used to entering this password on a regular basis.
This will pull all of the content for your house into your house folder from the mysterious, but generous, "cloud" of term-world.
To assist with your wayfinding, all of the houses built in the various neighborhoods of term-world feature the same layout, depicted below.
-----------
| KITCHEN |
-----------
|
------------- ---------
| DINING-ROOM | | BEDROOM |
------------- ---------
| /
------------- --------- --------
| LIVING-ROOM | -- | HALLWAY | -- | OFFICE |
------------- --------- --------
Each of these locations represent folders that you'll need to traverse in order to achieve the goals for this assignment. Notice that in several locations, "you can't get there from here," as the saying goes; in some occasions there are dead ends. You'll need to practice moving from folder to folder using both "forward" and "backward" directions.
There are 5 boxes scattered throughout your house. Your job is to unpack them.
Each box is a Python file -- this is the language that we'll be using to conduct this course. They work, well, "out of the box," so there's no need to change or even look at any code. To open a box, let's say the FragileBox.py that's in the kitchen:
python FragileBox.py
term-world will narrate some of the story of the world and give you a choice of where to put the contents. You can put items anywhere your house, but do you really need a Couch.py in the kitchen?
(Someone is reading this right now and thinking "Yeah, I do!")
If there exists only one rule about term-world, it's that you can use anything you have the permission to use. Given the lesson we learned about opening boxes above, the python command seems to make this happen for us. So, if you were to find a Couch.py somewhere in your house, it might be interesting to:
python Couch.py
Something equally curious might happen.
Each week's repository is outfitted with a grader that can be used to evaluate your work for the week. In order to run the this grader for a given week's work, you'll need to first navigate to the "root" folder of the assignment (that is, the base folder containing a given assignment's work, such as house for this week):
cd ~/house
Once there you'll need to run the following command:
gatorgrade
Once the grader has finished running (it may take a couple minutes) you'll be presented with a series of checks that determine the overall "completeness" of your work. For instance, your output may look something like:
✔ Customize the nameplate (no TODOs)
✘ Find the Ink hidden in the couch
✘ Print the lease
✔ Enter the house
✘ Open the UltraHeavyBox
✘ Open the FragileBox
✘ Open the SinisterLookingBox
✘ Open the TubeShapedBox
✘ Open the BeatUpBox
-~- FAILURES -~-
✘ Find the Ink hidden in the couch
✘ Print the lease
✘ Open the UltraHeavyBox
✘ Open the FragileBox
✘ Open the SinisterLookingBox
✘ Open the TubeShapedBox
✘ Open the BeatUpBox
Passed 2/9 (22%) of checks for user-house-solved! ┃
As you can tell, there are some checks which have been satisfied, though there are many which have not. Be sure to have all of the checks required for your desired grade completed by the due date!
The GitHub platform is a place to store your work. So, it makes some sense that should be able to download from it, and push back (upload) to it. Here, we'll learn this second part.
Bottom line: we need to tell git that there have been changes.
- Observe the list of files you've changed and add them to a
stagingarea using the+button to the right of each file - Once these have been "staged," attach a message to what we call a
commit-- a "packaging" of the files to send to GitHub - To transmit this newly-assembled packaged, locate the
Commit & Pushoption
The steps of the process are illustrated below.
It is nearly 100% likely that you will receive a prompt telling you to set your git config for user.name and/or user.email. Two commands in the terminal fix this. Replace the relevant information in the examples below:
git config --global user.name "YOUR GITHUB USERNAME"
git conifg --global user.email "YOUR ALLEGHENY EMAIL"Then, retry the above process. Once the process finishes successfully, we're done! We can verify the results on GitHub.
While we may use this server to store code, you are responsible for using GitHub as your main backup.
In the event that the term-world server goes down for any unforeseen reason, your work may be lost. Though this server is backed up on a regular (i.e. weekly) basis, there is no guarantee that up-to-the-minute data for your work will be restored.
Remember: to err is human; to back up your work is divine.