This walk-through should help you setup the tools you’ll need for this class, and it should familiarize you with the workflow you’ll use for development and hand-in. We will be using Mason GitLab for all the CS 475 programming assignments.
You’ll need to complete these steps:
cs475-fall21 group on GitLab.cs475-fall21/labs repo to a private repo under your own GitLab user.Private visibility.IMPORTANT: To create a new repository. You must fork the original project GitLab repository and then immediately change the permission of the project to
Private. Leaving your repository publicly visible violates GMU Honor Code and CS Department’s Honor Code policies and thus is treated as cheating!
Detailed lab setup process is listed below:
First, you will need to login to GitLab by clicking
Sign in with: GMU Login. Username and Password never work as
it is for non-mason users.
Find the cs475-fall21 group on GitLab, and fork the cs475-fall21/labs
repo to a private repo under your own GitLab user.
Immediately set your fork of the labs repo to “Private” visibility.
To do so, go to your forked project, from Settings, go to
General, from there change Visibility level to Private.
Finally, to start development you’ll have to do some further setup on a computing environment (preferably one of our student.cs Zeus Linux server or a cloud virtual machine server). Assume you are working on Zeus, shell back into one of the Zeus machines.
% ssh zeus.vse.gmu.edu
Note: You don’t need to install Go on Zeus as Go is already installed. You may like to read more on how to install Go wherever you like to setup your development environment.
(If you’ve already got a public/private key pair you use for SSH that you’d like to keep using you can skip this step. If that doesn’t mean much to you then you’ll need to take a few more steps.)
Before cloning your private repo to your computing environment, you will need to first create an RSA SSH key by typing:
% ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email"
This should create two files: ~/.ssh/id_rsa, which you should never
share with anyone and ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, which you can add to
GitLab to give you access to your repos.
Or you can follow this tutorial to create a public/private key pair.
Then, add the public key to your GitLab account.
% cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
Copy the contents of that file. In GitLab go to your User Setting
page and click SSH Keys, give the key a title, and paste the
contents you copied into the Key box. Once you’ve done this git on
Zeus should be able to access your repos on GitLab.
Or you can follow these instructions for adding an SSH key to your GitLab account.
Tell git about the email address you used on GitLab and your name, if you haven’t done this already:
% git config --global user.email <your_email>
% git config --global user.name <your_name>
Now you’ll want to ‘clone’ your private repo from GitLab. Click on
the Clone button at the right-top corner of your GitLab repo’s
webpage, copy the string under Clone with SSH to clipboard.
Then, create a new directory called cs475-fall21 under your
$HOME directory, cd to your working directory, and clone your
repo on to your Linux box (make sure to sub in your GID here for
<your_gid>):
% mkdir $HOME/cs475-fall21
% cd $HOME/cs475-fall21
% git clone git@git.gmu.edu:<your_gid>/labs.git
Cloning into 'labs'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 13, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (13/13), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (12/12), done.
Receiving objects: 100% (13/13), 10.19 KiB | 10.19 MiB/s, done.
remote: Total 13 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
% ls
labs/
If that all works you should now have a new directory called labs/
with all of the labs’ skeleton code inside.
So far, we’ve seen three Git repos of code. The first two were on GitLab (i.e., cloud) with a third in our home directory on Zeus. For most students this is probably starting to seem complicated so let’s take a step back and think about what they are each for and how each can/should be used.
The first, is the cs475-fall21/labs repo on GitLab. This repo
contains the basis for all the projects. You’ll never have to modify
this repo or push anything to it - it just supplies the basis for
the class. There may be times when this gets updated to deal with
bugs in the lab code; in these cases instructions will be sent out
about how to merge those changed into your lab work with as little
pain as possible.
The second repo was the private GitLab repo you created under your
own user. This serves a few purposes. It’s a place where you can
permanently store or push code that you’d like to make sure stays
safe. It also provides a place where you can push your code changes
for me to pick up for grading.
Finally, the third repo you created was a clone of the second into
your home directory on Zeus. This is the repo where you’ll do your
development and make your commits. Once you’re happy with how you’ve
set things up there, or if you want to make sure your data is safely
stored off of the Zeus machine then you can push the commits you’ve
made to your local Zeus repo over to your private GitLab repo.
You’ll want to walk through the Go Tour after you’ve got a working installation. The tour is interactive - so it’ll give you an easy way to play with the language and get a sense of how it differs from C, C++, Java, etc.
Effective Go is an optional but interesting read that will undoubtedly improve your Go code - it details nearly all of the more nuanced aspects of the language.
It may be helpful to read How to Write Go
Code, which outlines the details of the
go tool, though we’ll only use a subset of its capabilities for the
labs. Go has a stylized way to run, compile, and test code - this
document gives the full details of how it works.
Check in your new code:
% git add <your_modified_src>
% git commit -m "your_message"
% git push
You will need to share access to your GitLab repo with GTA so that we
can pull from your repo and grade. You can enable sharing through the
GitLab web interface. Hover over to Settings on the left sidebar,
and click Members. Enter GTA’s Patriot ID (ryang22) and choose
a role (Maintainer).