cs111-F2017-lab10-starter

Designed for use with GitHub Classroom, this repository contains the starter for Laboratory 10 in Computer Science 111.

Introduction

This assignment requires programmers run study the output of two Java programs, called MandelbrotBlackAndWhite and MandelbrotColor. These two programs use multiple types of iteration constructs and conditional logic to produce Mandelbrot images. If you want to learn more about the Mandelbrot set and the associated images, please review this Wikipedia article. You and your team members will run these programs in order to carefully characterize both their graphical output and their execution time efficiency. Please read the laboratory assignment sheet for more details about how you should complete these tasks.

The programmers are also responsible for writing a three-paragraph reflection, stored in the file writing/reflection.md, that explains the challenges that they faced and the solutions they developed as they were running the Mandelbrot programs. Additionally, you should write a file called writing/color.md that explains, for all of the separate configurations of the MandelbrotColor program that you are asked to investigate, the variations in color and shape that you observe in the generated images. Finally, you are invited to write a file called writing/time.md that uses Markdown tables to record the execution times associated with running the MandelbrotColor program in different configurations.

These Markdown files that must adhere to the standards described in the Markdown Syntax Guide. Remember, you can preview the contents of a comitted Markdown file by clicking on the name of the file in your GitHub repository. Finally, don't forget that your writing/reflection.md file should adhere to the Markdown standards established by the Markdown linting tool and the writing standards set by the Proselint tool. For this laboratory assignment, the team members should jointly write the first paragraph. Then, each team member should write their own reflection that comments on their individual experiences in completing the assignment. To ensure that students can flexibly complete all of the writing for this laboratory assignment, none of the writing checks will be performed for the writing/color.md and writing/time.md files.

Please note that, for this assignment, you and your team members are only required to make minimal changes to the two provided programs. As such, there are no source code checks for this assignment. Instead, you will be required to run the programs in different configurations and then generate and commit the graphics that correspond to the run from each program configuration.

When you use the git commit command to transfer your source code to your GitHub repository, Travis CI will check some of the writing in your assignment, ensuring that it meets all of the requirements. If both your source code and writing meet all of the established requirements, then you will see a green ✔ in the listing of commits in GitHub. If your submission does not meet the requirements, a red ✗ will appear instead. The instructor will reduce a programmer's grade for this assignment if the red ✗ appears on the last commit in GitHub immediately before the assignment's due date.

A carefully formatted assignment sheet for this project provides more details about the steps that a computer scientist should take to complete this assignment. You can view this assignment sheet by visiting the listing of laboratories on the course web site.

Learning

If you have not done so already, please read all of the relevant GitHub Guides that explain how to use many of the features that GitHub provides. In particular, please make sure that you have read the following GitHub guides: Mastering Markdown, Hello World, and Documenting Your Projects on GitHub. Each of these guides will help you to understand how to use both GitHub and GitHub Classroom.

To do well on this assignment, you should also review Chapters 1 through 4 and study Sections 6.1 through 6.4 and Section 8.1. Please see the course instructor or one of the teaching assistants or tutors if you have questions about any of these reading assignments.

Commands

You can also complete several important Java programming tasks by using the gradle tool. For instance, you can compile (i.e., create bytecode from the program's source code if it is a correct program) the program using the command gradle build. There are also additional commands that you can type:

• gradle clean: clean the project of all the derived files
• gradle check: check the quality of the code using Checkstyle
• gradle build: create the bytecode from the Java source code
• gradle run: run the Java program in the command-line
• gradle tasks: display details about the Gradle system

To run one of these commands, you must be in the main directory for this assignment where the build.gradle file is located. Then, you can type the command in the terminal and study the output. Please note that, since this program interacts with the user in the terminal window, you must run it differently than you ran past programs. Specifically, you should use the following command to run the MandelbrotBlackAndWhite:

gradle -b build-bw.gradle run

When you want to run the MandelbrotColor program, please type:

gradle -b build-color.gradle run

Please note that once you change the value of a variable in the MandelbrotColor program you will need to build the program again before running it. Please see the course instructor if you notice that the graphical output in the file never changes. Finally, you will need to save each of the graphical output files to a file with a unique name; you can use the cp command to accomplish this task. Please make sure that you correctly save all of your graphics to the graphics directory; note that the sample files in this directory are only there for illustrative purposes and are not the ones that you need to commit in order to complete this assignment.

Travis

This assignment uses Travis CI to automatically run a checking program every time you commit to your GitHub repository. The checking will start as soon as you have accepted the assignment, thus creating your own private repository, and the course instructor enables Travis for it. If you are using Travis for the first time, you will need to authorize Travis CI to access the private repositories that you created on GitHub.

Requirements

The GatorGrader software that supports the checking of this assignment was developed for the following software and versions:

• gradle 4.1
• java 1.8.0
• mdl 0.4.0
• proselint 0.7.0

Problems

If you have found a problem with this assignment's provided source code, then you can go to the Computer Science 111 Lab 10 Starter repository and create an issue by clicking the "Issues" tab and then clicking the green "New Issue" button. If you have found a problem with the GatorGrader tool and the way that it checks you assignment, then you can follow the aforementioned steps to create an issue in its repository. To ensure that your issue is properly resolved, please provide as many details as is possible about the problem that you experienced. If you discover a problem with the laboratory assignment sheet, then please raise an issue in the cs111-F2017-lab-sheets repository and mention this assignment.

Students who find, and use the appropriate GitHub issue tracker to correctly document, a mistake in any aspect of this laboratory assignment will receive free laptop stickers and extra credit towards their grade for it.

Assistance

If you are having trouble completing any part of this project, then please talk with either the course instructor or a teaching assistant during the laboratory session. Alternatively, you may ask questions in the Slack team for this course. Finally, you can schedule a meeting during the course instructor's office hours.