MarkUs Moss

Tool to generate Moss reports from MarkUs submissions.

Installation

pip install git+https://github.com/MarkUsProject/markus-moss.git

Optional External Dependencies:

• pandoc (required for copy_files_to_pdf action)

Usage

markusmoss {arguments}

Running markusmoss is guaranteed to be idempotent as long as the --force option is not used.

arguments:

MarkUs moss takes several optional command line arguments. Depending on the action selected, different arguments are required. If a required argument is not specified, markusmoss.py will raise an error during runtime.

Arguments can be specified on the command line or in a config file (see below).

• --help : show help message and exit
• --markus-api-key : (string) markus api key
• --markus-url : (string) markus url
• --markus-course : (string) markus course short identifier
• --markus-assignment : (string) markus assignment short identifier
• --moss-userid : (integer) moss userid
• --moss-report-url : (string) moss report url
• --config : (string) config file (see format below) : default is ${PWD}/.markusmossrc
• --workdir : (string) working directory : default is ${PWD}
• --actions : (strings) actions (see below) : default is to run all actions in order
• --groups : (strings) only use the groups listed : default is to use all groups from the specified MarkUs assignment
• --language : (strings) moss programming languages (see below)
• --file-glob : (string) glob describing submission files to test with moss (see below): default is '**/*'
• --generate-config: (string) write a config file (see format below) to the path specified from all other arguments given. If no path is given to this flag, write to stdout.
• --html-parser : (string) bs4 html parser: default is 'html.parser'
• --force : redo all specified actions: default is not to redo previously executed actions
• --verbose : log actions to stdout

config format

Instead of passing arguments to the command line, most arguments can be specified in a toml configuration file. All command line arguments can also be specified in the config file except:

• config
• help

It is recommended to store options in the config file that are unlikely to change (ex: markus-api-key, markus-url, moss-userid) and to pass other options to the command line.

An example config file might contain the following:

markus_api_key="abc123xyz"
markus_url="http://example.com/markus"
moss_userid=123456789

Note that the config file uses underscores instead of hyphens.

Information about obtaining the markus_api_key and markus_url can be found here: https://github.com/MarkUsProject/Markus/wiki/RESTful-API#authentication

Information about obtaining the moss_userid can be found here: http://moss.stanford.edu/

actions

• download_submission_files
  • Download submission files from MarkUs and write them to the submission_files subdirectory
  • required arguments:
    • workdir
    • markus-api-key
    • markus-url
    • markus-course
    • markus-assignment
• copy_files_to_pdf
  • Copy the files in the submission_files subdirectory to the pdf_submission_files subdirectory
  • depends on:
    • download_submission_files
  • required arguments:
    • workdir
    • file-glob
  • require extenal dependencies:
    • pandoc
• download_starter_files
  • Download the starter file (if any) from MarkUs and write them to the starter_files subdirectory
  • required arguments:
    • workdir
    • markus-api-key
    • markus-url
    • markus-course
    • markus-assignment
• run_moss
  • Run moss checker on submission files and write url of moss report to moss_report/report_url.txt
  • depends on:
    • download_submission_files
    • download_starter_files
  • required arguments:
    • workdir
    • moss-userid
    • file-glob
• download_moss_report
  • Download full moss report from moss report url to moss_report/report subdirectory
  • depends on:
    • run_moss
  • required arguments:
    • workdir
    • markus-assignment
• write_final_report
  • Compile moss report (see report format below) to final_report
  • depends on:
    • copy_files_to_pdf
    • download_moss_report
  • required arguments:
    • workdir
    • file-glob
    • html-parser

All subirectories are assumed to be in the specified workdir.

moss languages

For a full list of programming languages that can be parsed by moss:

http://moss.stanford.edu/

file-glob explanation

MarkUs submissions often contain multiple file types but moss can only evaluate similarity for one language at a time. In order to specify which files should be sent to moss for evaluation, the file-glob argument can be used.

For example, to run moss on python files in any subdirectory from a MarkUs submission:

markusmoss --config my_config.toml --language python --file-glob '**/*.py'

Output Files

After running all actions in order, the contents of the workdir should look like:

workdir/
├── final_report/
│   └── assignment_short_id/
│       ├── case_1/
│       │   ├── group_1
│       │   │   ├── group_data.csv
│       │   │   ├── org
│       │   │   │   └── source_file.py
│       │   │   └── pdf
│       │   │       └── source_file.py.pdf
│       │   ├── group_2
│       │   │   ├── group_data.csv
│       │   │   ├── org
│       │   │   │   └── source_file.py
│       │   │   └── pdf
│       │   │       └── source_file.py.pdf
│       │   └── moss.html
│       ├── ...
│       ├── case_n/
│       └── case_overview.csv
├── moss_report/
│   ├── report/
│   └── report_url.txt
├── pdf_submission_files/
│   ├── group_1/
│   ├── ...
│   └── group_n/
├── starter_files/
│   └── assignment_short_id/
└── submission_files/
    ├── group_1/
    ├── ...
    └── group_n/

The all directories except for those contained in final_report are not required for the final report and can be deleted safely once all actions have been run.

final report format

The final report contains a subdirectory for the MarkUs assignment. Within that directory is a case overview file with the details of each case reported by moss. There is a subdirectory for each case which contains the submission files for each group in both text and pdf formats. Each case also contains one group_data.csv file per group which contains information about each group. Each case also contains a moss.html file which contains the moss report for the specific case in question. This report can be viewed by opening the moss.html file in any web browser.

group_data.csv format

This csv file contains information about the group members, it contains the following columns:

• group_name : group name on MarkUs
• user_name : user name on MarkUs
• first_name : the student's first name
• last_name : the student's last name
• email : the student's email address (if available)
• id_number : the sutdent's id number (if available)

case_overview.csv format

This csv file contains information about the cases reported by moss, it contains the following columns:

• case : the case name
• groups : the group names of all groups compared for the given case (separated by ;)
• similarity (%) : the percentage similarity score reported by moss
• matched_lines : the number of identical lines of code reported by moss