lab00 : Getting Started

If you find typos or problems with the lab instructions, please report them on the #typos channel on Slack

Goals

This lab checks that you can succesfully edit, compile, run and submit a simple HelloWorld.java to Gradescope for grading.

If all goes well, it will only take a few minutes, and then you get started on the next lab immediately. That one will actually take some work.

Step 0: Getting oriented

Chances are you are already familiar with all of the following because you already took CS courses that used this stuff (i.e. CS8, CS16, CS24, CS32).

If not–if for example, you are a transfer student and this is your first CS course using the CSIL Lab resources, please let your TA know and he/she will help you find resources to come up to speed on these things. Or, your TA can assign you a pair partner that knows this stuff and doesn’t mind helping you come up to speed.

• knowing your College of Engineering/CSIL computer account username/password–and having an active working account.
• knowing how to login to the systems in Phelps 3525 and the CSIL lab, and bring up both a web browser, and a terminal window.
• knowing that “CSIL” is both a server you can log into, as well as a physical room full of computers–and knowing where to find that physical room, and what hours it is open.
• knowing how to use a basic text editor such as emacs or vim to edit files on the Linux systems in Phelps 3525 and CSIL.
• knowing basic Unix/Linux commands to create directories, change directory, manipulate files, etc., e.g. mkdir, cd, pwd, mv, rm, ls.

The rest of these instructions will assume you know all of the above. If not, then let your TA know, and we’ll point you to resources where you can come up to speed.

Here, for example, is some basic instruction on vim

As a separate item, you should also know how to connect to CSIL from your own computer (WindowsNN/Mac/Linux)

• Windows
• Mac
• Linux

But, you don’t need that for today’s lab—so let’s continue.

The rest of the lab: Step-by-Step

Step 1: Create a CoE account if you don’t have one already

For this first assignment, we’ll encourage you to login to the machines in the to the machines in the Computer Science labs, or to connect remotely, and do the assignment on CSIL.

Later in the course, for a variety of reasons, if you have your own laptop, it may be more effective to do your work there. We’ll try to always offer an option to work on the CSIL machines though, and we’d like everyone to start there so that we all have a common platform we can share.

To do this you will need a College of Engineering account. You can create an account online at https://accounts.engr.ucsb.edu/create if you don’t already have one.

If you are enrolled in any CoE course this quarter (including CS56), you should be able to create your account immediately.

If you are not able to do so, you will need to contact the ECI Help Desk at help@engineering.ucsb.edu.

Step 2: Get setup with github and add yourself to our organization

We will be using github.com in this course. We have created an organization called on github.com where you can create repositories (repos) for your assignments in this course.

The advantage of creating private repos under this organization is that the course staff (your instructors and TAs) will be able to see your code and provide you with help, without you having to do anything special.

To join this organization, you need to do three things.

1. If you don’t already have a github.com account, create one on the “free” plan. Visit https://github.com/

2. If you don’t already have your @ucsb.edu email address associated with your github.com account. go to “settings”, add that email, and confirm that email address. (If you have an @umail.ucsb.edu address registered there, that also works.)

3. Visit our Github Sign Up Tool at https://ucsb-cs-github-linker.herokuapp.com/. Navigate to https://ucsb-cs-github-linker.herokuapp.com/. Login with your github.com account. Click “Home”, find this course (CS56, W20), and click the “Join course button”. That will automatically send you an invitation to join the course organization on github.

4. There should be a link to the invitation for the GitHub organization for this course (https://github.com/). Click on the invitation link and accept it. You can also go straight to https://github.com/ and see the invitation there (if you’re logged in). Accept the invitation that appears in your browser (from step 3) or log into your account on https://github.com/ to accept the invitation.

Step 3: Get setup with gradescope

We will use gradescope to grade all your homeworks, exams and lab/programming assignments. I have manually added everyone (using your @umail.ucsb.edu accounts) currently enrolled in the course to the Gradescope system. You should have received an email notification with instructions about logging into gradescope. Once you follow the instructions to set your password, you should have access to our course on Gradescope. You should see CS56 in your W20 courses.

The lab assignment lab00 should appear in your Gradescope dashboard in CS56. You will need to submit your code for lab00 using this page.

Step 4: Some Java coding

1. Login to your CSIL account, and create a ~/cs56 subdirectory.

2. In that directory, use your favorite text editor (e.g. vim, emacs) to create a file containing the following code. Call the file Hello.java. Put your name instead of Your Name Here.

(Side note: if you prefer it, two new editors are now available on CSIL staring Summer 2018: atom and visual studio code. We may be making considerable use of Visual Studio Code, so if you haven’t used either, and would like to try one, we would steer you towards VS Code. You can type code at the command line on the CSIL machines to access VS Code. This typically works well only when you are sitting at one of the machines in Phelps 3525 or CSIL though; it doesn’t work so well over remote X11 forwarding).

   /**
     @author Your Name Here
   */

   public class Hello {

     public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello World!");
     }

   }

NOTE: Please don’t put literally Your Name Here in the code above. Write your actual name. Thanks!

1. Compile the file with the command javac Hello.java

2. Run the file with the command java Hello

3. Navigate to https://gradescope.com. You should have an account invitation in your email. If you don’t, ask an instructor, TA or mentor for assistance.

4. Upload your work to Gradescope.com for grading. If you are working from your own machine (i.e. ssh’ing into CSIL), you’ll need to transfer the file to your own machine before you can upload it for grading.
   • If you aren’t sure how, there is a link on the CS16 web page that explains how to copy files between CSIL and your own machine.

5. Once you see that you have a score of 100 for lab00 on Gradescope, you are done with lab00, BUT there is STILL MORE TO DO TODAY!

   Find a pair partner for lab01 from the students on your own team. (The team that you were placed on in the first lecture, and that you should be sitting together with in lab.)

   If there is an odd number of students on your team (or an odd number that has shown up today for lab), then check in with your team’s mentor.

   In that case, they’ll help you find a pair partner, or in rare cases, you may be given permission to work alone on lab01.

   Then get started on lab01.