Software Construction, Spring 2024

Homework 01

Setup

Follow this Software Setup to get a working GitPod workspace on a school computer, or your own personal laptop.

This homework has three parts.

1. Git-Tac-Toe
2. Reading
3. Rustlings

Do the Git-Tac-Toe part first while you are in lab, since it requires a partner and it is easiest to do when you are both together.

The other parts can be done offline and by yourself, although you are welcome to discuss and collaborate with others as well.

Each student will be checked off and asked about their work individually.

Part 1. Git-Tac-Toe

From the morning session, you'll be assigned a partner to play a tic-tac-toe game by editing text files in one of the game-xx repositories following the instructions below.

In lab, you'll be randomly assigned one of the game-xx repositories by Winston or Paul, where xx will be a number from 01 to 15

You can go to the repository for that game by visiting a URL like

https://github.com/TheEvergreenStateCollege/game-xx

where you'll replace xx with your assigned number.

Play A First Game

1. Both partners should sit at neighboring computers and both login, starting up their GitPod workspaces or development environment.
2. If one or both partners doesn't have a GitPod account yet,
3. Decide which of you will be X or O. Flip a coin to decide who will go first (call them Partner 1, and the other Partner 2)
4. In their respective GitPod workspaces, both partners will change to the corresponding directory

cd sc-24sp/git-games/game-xx

6. Repeat until one Partner has won. Keep track of your moves starting with Move 1.
   1. Partner 1, on their dev environment, will git pull to retrieve any changes (usually in game.txt), and merge any conflicts.
   2. Partner 1 will then edit the file game.txt by placing their move X or O.
   3. Partner 1 will commit and push their move on main branch to the remote repo.
      • git add -u .
      • `git commit -m "Make move ."
      • git push
   4. Partner 2, on their dev environment, will git pull to retrieve any changes (usually in game.txt), and merge any conflicts.
   5. Partner 2 will then edit the file game.txt by placing their move O or X.
   6. Partner 2 will commit and push their move on main branch to the remote repo.
      • git add -u .
      • `git commit -m "Make move ."
      • git push

Play a Second Game, Revising the Past

If one player won, discuss the earliest past move where one player could have changed the outcome of the game.

View the commit history in your git game repo, again substituting your game number for xx in this repo URL.

https://github.com/TheEvergreenStateCollege/game-xx/commits/main/

Let's the earliest past move has commit hash abcdef1 where Player Y made a particular move.

Player Y (with the other player's permission of course) will now redo the move to one where they think they have a chance to change the outcome of the game.

git checkout abcdef1
git checkout -b redo

Then repeat the procedure, pulling and pushing, as in the first game starting from this new move, until the game ends again.

Questions

Consider the following questions for your checkoff.

1. Is there always a winning strategy?

• Under what conditions?
• If not, give a counterexample.

2. If there is a winning strategy, how would you describe it in English?

• Is there a way to express this strategy in pseudo-code?

Part 2. Reading

Read and do the exercises in The Rust Interaction Book for the first four chapters:

Rust Book: Chapter 01 - Getting Started

Rust Book: Chapter 02 - Guessing Game

Rust Book: Chapter 03 - Concepts

Rust Book: Chapter 04 - Ownership

Part 3. Rustlings

In your GitPod workspace, change into the sc-24sp/rustlings directory and run the command

rustlings watch

You can open another terminal and change to the same sc-24sp/rustlings directory to run the command

rustlings hint <exercise_file_name>

as needed.

As shown in the screenshot below, complete the Rustlings exercises by typing into the files

• 00-intro
• 01-variables
• 02-functions
• 03-if
• 04-primitive-types
• 05-vecs
• 06-move-semantics

In GitPod, your files are autosaved as you type, and the rustlings watch terminal will automatically recompile and let you know whether your current exercise file is complete, or the compile error in the next file if you remove the comment line // I AM NOT DONE

Do not add or commit your rustlings work. The rustlings directory is gitignore'd and you'll be checked off in-person.

Checkoff

There is nothing to submit online for this assignment. You'll be checked off in-person by Paul during the Monday afternoon session.

Do your best and ask questions if you get stuck.

Use the same browser (school computer or your own laptop) where you solved the exercise in order to save your answers.