This program was written in 2009 when turnin was the primary method for students to submit their assignments. As of 2013 an online submission system exists that is vastly superior in every way.

https://submit.cs.ucsb.edu

Please encourage your instructor to use this system even if you do not intend to use it for its testing capabilities.

Note that for each of these examples, SAMPLE_PROJ is the directory where the student submissions are tarballed to. working is the directory selected for the submissions to be extracted to.

./turnin_helper.py --help

./turnin_helper.py -x SAMPLE_PROJ

• Note the addition of the bboe-1 directory (most recent bboe submission)
• Note the extract_log file added to the current directory

./turnin_helper.py -x SAMPLE_PROJ --work-dir=working

Must answer yes to the confirmation question

./turnin_helper.py -m SAMPLE_PROJ --work-dir=working

Note the make_log file created inside the project directories(s).

Warning: Running student submitted makefiles can be dangerous as they can execute something like rm -rf ~ which will delete everything in the executing account's home directory. I recommend not allowing students to make modifications to the makefile and providing a known clean makefile via the --makefile option.

./turnin_helper.py --work-dir=working --purge SAMPLE_PROJ

Note that this will only delete directories and their contents which correspond to the directories created via extraction. If the working directory happens to be empty after all the project directories have been deleted then a confirmation will appear asking if you'd like to delete the working directory.

./turnin_helper.py -m SAMPLE_PROJ --work-dir=working --target=clean

./turnin_helper.py --csv SAMPLE_PROJ --work-dir=working

The csv will be stored in the work-dir and contain columns for student first names, last names, usernames, and GRADE file contents. GRADE files are described later in this document.

Via the --test-function argument a test function can be run on each of the submissions. These test functions must be written by you, but a sample test function, sample_test_function, is provided as a model.

sample_test_function is intended to work with the SAMPLE_PROJ project. For each student's most recent project (there is only 1 student in the example) the function checks for the binary that should have been produced by Make. If it exists the student is awarded 1 point, otherwise 0. The student-specific GRADE file is autoamtically produced.

We can invoke the failure case by providing a make target that does not exist:

./turnin_helper.py -xm --target foo --test-function=sample_test_function SAMPLE_PROJ

After running the above the contents of bboe-1/GRADE will be:

SCORE: 0

The contents of bboe-1/make_log will indicate why Make did not succeed:

make: *** No rule to make target `foo'.  Stop.

./turnin_helper.py -xm --test-function=sample_test_function SAMPLE_PROJ

After running the above the contents of bboe-1/GRADE will be:

SCORE: 1

You can alter this function or write you own to perform a variety of different tests.

Once a project has been extracted a grade emails can be sent to all the students in one simple proceedure. There are a couple of features here:

• In each student's project directory a GRADE file can be created. If a project has a GRADE file in it, when invoking the --email function that student will be sent an email containing the contents of this file. Emails are constructed from the student's [email protected]. Conversely students without a GRADE file will not receive an email (a warning will be output).
• In the working directory a generic GRADE file can be created. This will be be appended to the individial message a student receives. The contents of this file are useful for generic information about the project's grading.

# Extract the submission
./turnin_helper.py -x SAMPLE_PROJ --work-dir=working
# Create a generic message about the grading of the project
echo "Generic info about SAMPLE_PROJ" > working/GRADE
# Create a student-specific message indicating the grade on the project
echo "BBOE specific info regarding SAMPLE_PROJ" > working/bboe-1/GRADE
# Email the results from the account bboe
./turnin_helper.py --email=bboe SAMPLE_PROJ/ --work-dir=working

The email I receive looks like:

From: Bryce Boe <[email protected]>
Received: from csil.cs.ucsb.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1])
	  by csil.cs.ucsb.edu (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id n9F51GkM023424
	  for <[email protected]>; Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:01:16 -0700
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:01:16 -0700
To: [email protected]
Subject: SAMPLE_PROJ Grade

BBOE specific info regarding SAMPLE_PROJ

Generic info about SAMPLE_PROJ