HW 2: Hello Project

Read time: 7 minutes (1996 words)

This assignment is designed to make sure you can use Git and GitHub to manage your development work.

Submitting Homework

To submit a homework assignment, open up a command prompt window and get into your homework repository directory.

Create a new folder for each homework, named to indicate what assignment it is. At this point, you need to do this:

$ mkdir HW2

In each of these homework folders, place a README.rst file that looks something like this:

HW2: Hello Project
##################
:Author: Roie R. Black
:Course: COSC2325-003
:Instructor: Roie R> Black
:Started on: Jan 27, 2019
:Submitted on:  Jan 27, 2019

Place any text you like here.

The note at the bottom should just describe this “project”. For more complex projects, tell a bit of a story here. The idea is to get used to telling the reader of your project code something about the project. (Actually, we are placing each homework “project” in this single repository, with each assignment in a separate subfolder. We could have a separate repository for each assignment, but that is overkill for our homework projects.

Now, use the “getting started” guide to get this work up onto GitHub. Basically that process looks like this:

$ git add .
$ git commit -m "what did I do"
$ git push origin master

Of course, you might check things along the way by asking Git what it thinks. These three steps are a kind of “mantra” developers just automatically do every so often!

How often?

You decide. At a minimum, before they walk away from any work session. More than that? Maybe. I like to do a “push” when I think the project has reached some milestone. For students, when you get stuck and want to ask for help, push what you have now. I can update my copy of your project and see what is going on!

Note

If you only push the project when you get it done, there is no way I can see how you went about doing your work. I like to check on your progress, and try to get you working smarter. Flailing away is not a good habit to get into! (We call that “blasting code”! It rarely generates anything to be proud of!)

What About HW2?

We really need a real program here. Select one of these program code examples and see if you can make it work:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

void message(string name) {
    std::cout << "My name is " << name << std::endl;
}

int main(void) {
    std::string myname = "Roie R. Black";
    message(myname);
}

You can run this program as follows:

$ g++ -c hello.cpp -o hello.o
$ g++ hello.o -o hello
$ ./hello
My name is Roie R. Black

Push To GitHub

Now, get this file on GitHub using your “mantra”!

Guess what! That is all you need to do.