Open the terminal and let’s get going!

This is what my terminal looks like when I open it:

ben@um:~$

To break that down: ben is my computer name and um is my machine name. I’m in my home directory so I just have a ~ (that’s called a tilde in case you wondered).

Mea culpa

First off, a mea culpa. I managed to leave a couple of things out of the VM as you got it. First order of business is to fix that. This is going to take some typing into the terminal.

sudo -H pip install colorama

This will ask you for your password, and then install the colorama package. This makes it fairly easy to colour the results of a print to the terminal. This gets used a lot in the tests.

How to homework

Let’s get your copy of the code onto your computer

git clone [your clone path, from the green button on github]

Now we can change directory and go into the code1161base directory. From now on, let’s just call this base.

cd code1161base

Let’s see what’s there, ls lists the contents of the folder:

ben@um:~/code1161base$ ls
aboutMe.yml      email_template.md  node_modules  week2  week6
admin            __init__.py        README.md     week3  week8
codeHelpers.py   marking_puller.py  vmStartup     week4
codeHelpers.pyc  mugshot.png        week1         week5

Running the command python week1/pytest.py does all the work you need. So, here’s how it goes for me:

ben@um:~/code1161base$ python week1/pytest.py
Let's test Python and Requests:

****************************************
*                                      *
*   Python and requests are working!   *
*                                      *
*    All hail his noodly appendage!    *
*                                      *
****************************************
8232d00b53d4d3d04424a78156c79f9e

ben@um:~/code1161base$

Your long number will be different to mine.

If you don’t get this, then you might not have a current internet connection.

Don’t stop yet, there’s more to do!

You’ve done your homework, but you need to submit it. On this course, this is done using github.

If you’ve done the first part, there will be 2 new files created. We can see this by using git status:

ben@um:~/code1161base$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

    week1/_checkID
    week1/_requestsWorking

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
ben@um:~/code1161base$

The two files are sitting there, sad, untracked, waiting to be pulled into the git fold. You can do this by typing git add . or git add week1/_checkID week1/_requestsWorking, so you can see why git add . is more popular. In this context, the . means everything in this folder (and below). Usually we want to commit more carefully than this, but these two files are actually related so we want them committed together.

ben@um:~/code1161base$ git add .
ben@um:~/code1161base$

nothing happens, because it’s all going according to plan.

But if we do another git status we get:

ben@um:~/code1161base$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
Changes to be committed:
  (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)

    new file:   week1/_checkID
    new file:   week1/_requestsWorking

ben@um:~/code1161base$

These files are now staged, you still need to commit them. type git commit, then the flag -m which means that you’ll write the commit message inline, then a good commit message:

ben@um:~/code1161base$ git commit -m "do week 1 homework"
[master bdc280c] do week 1 homework
 2 files changed, 3 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 week1/_checkID
 create mode 100644 week1/_requestsWorking
ben@um:~/code1161base$

Now you just need to do a git push and follow the prompts.

Checking that it all worked

The easiest way to check is to look on github for the new files.

If you want to really make sure, then you can run the tests. We’ll be covering this in more detail in this week’s (week 2) lecture so don’t stress too much.

The tests are the actual code that I run on my computer to see if your work is correct. Each week has a tests.py file in it.

To run the tests for week 1, change directory into week 1:

ben@um:~/code1161base$ cd week1

and then run the test:

ben@um:~/code1161base$ python tests.py

Welcome to week 1!
Let's check that everything is set up.

✔ Exercise 1: Test that your VM is working
✔ Exercise 1: Test your connection to the internet
ben@um:~/code1161base$

If you get 2 ticks then you are done. Each tick is worth 1⁄number of teststh of that week’s marks. As there are 2 ticks, each one is worth 50%.