Assignment 2: Group Assignment

Overview

This will be a group assignment. You will be working in a group of 4 - 5 students. Every student will need to contribute code to their assignment.

You are asked to choose a task for this assignment. Consider the topics you have learned during your college career. What topics could be completed using a Python script? What are some common jobs you might expect to do on a Linux machine running in the workplace?

Consider some possibilities:

• Data backups and restore
• System monitoring and alerts
• System reports and metrics
• Diagnostics and health
• Automated system configuration
• Network configuration and subnetting
• User reports and management
• Security auditing

Other options are possible. Bring your ideas to the first meeting for approval.

Restrictions

• Your finished code will be put into a file called assignment2.py.
• You can import any modules from the Python standard library, but third-party modules are not permitted.
• Your assignment should use the argparse module to handle command line options and arguments. Refer to their documentation for help.
• Your assignment must be able to run on a Linux machine. You will demonstrate the usage of your assignment in class.
• All the code and required files will be inside your repository. You should clone your repo onto the Linux machine you are using to demonstrate your assignment, and I should be able to run git log to see the commits you've made.
• Any additional configuration needed to get your assignment working (ie. you need to make changes to system configuration files) must be documented and included in your repository.

The Design Process (As It Occurs In The Real World)

The design process looks like this:

1. Identify problems
2. Research solutions
3. Break the solutions into 1 or more functions (with input and output)
4. Complete the required functions
5. TEST!
6. Complete the main block
7. TEST!
8. Write comments and documentation
9. Merge into the main branch

When you complete this process for your Minimum Viable Product, you can start to iterate upon the code. Suggest improvements, polish the presentation of the output, experiment with additional features.

The Design Process (For This Assignment)

This assignment is broken into steps and will take some time to complete. Be sure to start early and identify obstacles as quickly as possible.

Initial Meetup

• You will be assigned to a group. Meet with your group members, and arrange methods of communication (email, Teams, etc.) A Discussion Topic on Blackboard is provided for you.
• Begin discussing a topic for your assignment. It is strongly recommended you have 2-3 ideas in case your first choice isn't suitable.
• Every group member should verify that their git configuration is set to identify them using their myseneca email. Note: use git config user.email on each of your devices to verify this.

Proposal Meeting

These will be done either online or in-person, and it is expected that all group members are attending and ready to contribute.

• Provide your 2 - 3 topic ideas
• Be prepared to answer some questions:
  • How will your program gather required input?
  • What output will be presented?
  • What kind of processing will be required to turn input into output?
  • Are there things you don't know yet? What will you have to research?

We will approve a topic and define the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the assignment. There will probably be some changes or suggestions that come up during our initial meeting. It's not necessary to get everything right on the first try, projects often go longer than expected! But you should have at least thought about some of these questions.

Once you have gotten approval for your script, you will get access to your repository for development. Include the description, overview and summary of the above questions inside your repository's README.md file.

info

You will receive an email from GitHub inviting you to collaborate on the group repository. Accept the invite ASAP because it will expire after a couple of days. If you miss the first invite, you will get a second chance but you will lose 50% of marks for commits. If you miss the second invite, you will receive a zero for assignment 2.

Milestone 1

The milestone will be another meeting during our scheduled class. An approved proposal is a prerequisite for this milestone. Again, all group members are expected to attend. At this milestone you are expected to have:

• Finished your research. You should know how you will collect data, what modules or shell commands will accomplish your goals.
• Created function definitions for each step in your process. You should know what inputs/output each function will require.
• Entered comments in your main block to demonstrate how each function interacts with the next.

You are not required to have full functions written at this point. We will discuss the workflow of your program and identify possible issues before moving forward. Groups showing completed code at this point will receive a zero for this milestone.

Milestone 2

Milestone is a prerequisite for this milestone. At this point you are expected to have:

• Completed the required functions which were discussed in milestone 1.
• Tested the functions.

Once your functions are completed and approved, you can complete your main block and design your argparse function. Additional options may change how your fucntions behave.

Assignment Demonstration and Code Review

Completing at least one milestone is a prerequisite for the code review. On the day of your demonstration, again all group members are expected to attend.

• Your code must be complete before class begins.
• For in-person sections, the assignment should be running on Matrix, MyVMLab, or one of your Linux VMs.
• For online sections, I will clone your repository and run it locally.
• Use git status and git log in the repository directory.
• I will run the code, and evaluate the user experience, command line arguments, and readability of the output.
• I will ask you specific questions about how your code works. If you wrote the code, you will be required to explain.

At the conclusion of your Code Review, the assignment is considered complete. I will use the commit you demonstrated in class to evaluate your work.

Post-Mortem

There is an additional Post-Mortem due on Blackboard. These forms are individual each student must write their own.

Contributing to the Assignment

danger

In order to measure your contributions to the assignment, I will be looking at the commits you make that become part of the main branch. Read the next section carefully. If you attempt to bypass the proper procedure for making commits and pull requests, you will not receive marks for your contributions.

There is an additional restriction: Don't push to the main branch. This is a common restriction in the workplace, where the main branch is protected.

Group members should decide which functions they are working on, and then create a branch to commit to. Once a function is complete, they will open a pull request and their group members can approve it. The code then becomes part of the 'main' branch.

Instructions for these processes are listed below.

Setting Up Branches

• From GitHub, it is recommended that you create a branch for each member of your group. Click the 'main' drop-down and select 'Create a new branch'. Enter your name, or a label for the feature you are working on.
• From your local computer, run git clone to clone your repo.
• Now you will need to checkout your specific branch in order to commit. Run git checkout <name of branch>
• If you get an error that the branch doesn't exist, you can create it locally by running git checkout -b <name of branch>
• Verify the branch you are on by using git status
• You will now be able to commit and push to that branch.

danger

Do not commit another group member's code, or share the repository with students with no access. In the workplace, this would be considered a security breach and is a fireable offense. If you commit another student's code or share the repository with someone that lacks permission, you will receive a zero for the assignment.

Pull Requests

When group members finish a feature that will become part of the assignment, they will need to open a pull request.

• From GitHub, select the 'main' branch. You will see a message that your branch is 'X commits ahead of main' and an option to 'Open a Pull Request'. Click that.
• Describe your changes. You will now need approval from 1-2 members of the group to approve your pull request.

I have prepared a short video that demonstrates this entire process.

Research

Your research findings should be included as comments in the assignment2.py file, or in the README. Your research should include links to any websites or external resources that you used. You should bring any books you used to code review for inspection.

Commits

Students are graded on how much they contributed to the final version of the assignment. Remember that in the workplace, git commits are your proof of work. Use your myseneca email address, document your contributions, and contribute fairly to your group.

Rubric

Group Mark

Criteria	Points
Proposal:
Group is prepared, and brings good ideas	5
Milestone 1:
Research and function definitions complete	2
Milestone 2:
Functions complete and tested	3
Code Review:
Assignment fulfills minimum viable product	3
Assignment has clean, organized output	2
Assignment has sensible arguments, default behaviour	3
Final Submission:
Research and References	5
Code is well documented	5
Appropriate Code Commits and Use of GitHub	2

Individual

Criteria	Points
Code Review Participation	5
Contributed Commits	5
Post Mortem	10