release-action

This repo has the code that automatically grants student access to the homework and lecture slide solutions. This README documents how to use it.

Semesterly update steps

Update index.js

"At the beginning of the semester update index.js (not the one in dist)

Update everything in this section:

Date information is based on ISO 8601 format. Importantly:

• 1 is Monday, 2 is Tuesday, ... 7 is Sunday
  • https://help.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/dates_calendar.htm
• Weeks are the ISO week of the year. See this calendar from East Carolina University
  • https://myweb.ecu.edu/mccartyr/isowdcal.html

const year = '23';       // 2 digit year as string (e.g. '23' for 2023)
const semester = 'fall'; // long name ('fall','spring', or 'summer')
const sem = 'fa'         // short name ('fa','sp', or 'su') 
const sections = {
    2: [1,2,3,98],
    3: [4,5,6],
    4: [7,99]
};
const mids_weeks = [
    // Iso weeks where we have class
    // first entry will be week 1 for hw/ls, second will be week 2, etc.
    35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,46,48,49,50
]; 
const hw_sol_release_weeks = [
    // Weeks where we have homeworks released to students
    // Should be the unit number + 1 
    // i.e. when you put 2 in the list, repo hw_1_sol will get released week 2. 
    2,3,4,6,10,12,13 
]; 
const hw_release_day = 4 // Monday = 1, etc.

Recompile the code to update dist/index.js

We update the "regular" index.js becasue its' a lot more compact and easy to work with. However, the actual file that gets run is dist/index.js. The dist/index.js file has the index.js file plus all of the JavaScript libraries that index.js needs to run built right in. Here's how we update dist/index.js with just the lines from index.js.

1. Clone this repo to your local machine
2. Run git pull if it's already there
3. Navigate to the directory that you just cloned
4. Run docker compose up in that directory
5. Make sure that the output from that command ends with a line that says release-action-node-1 exited with code 0
6. Run git add -A to stage your changes for commit
7. Run git status to see the changed files. make sure that you have changes staged in dist/index.js
8. Run git diff --cached to see the changes in dist/index.js the changed lines should be the ones that you chagned in index.js
9. Run git commit -m "Update for new semester" to commit your changes
10. Run git push to update the action on the github site.

Code Runner

Note that the actual action that runs this code is in instructor_central. It's at https://github.com/mids-w203/instructor_central/blob/master/.github/workflows/release_ls_sol.yml

Issue Log

Updater not running spring 2024

In spring 2024 (and fall 2023 in retrospect) we had an issue where the repo wasn't updating. The issue was that we were only updating the repo.js and not recompiling the packages. We need to recompile to propogate those updates to dist/index.js which is the file that actually gets run. The dist/index.js file has the config that we define in index.js plus the code for all of the libraries that it depends on. All those libraries` codes are requrired because the VM that our github action gets run on is more or less of a blank slate each time it gets run.

I interrogated ChatGPT a whole lot to get this thing fixed. Here's the link