Implement tooling

After launching the track with the first 20+ exercises, the focus should shift to implementing the track tooling.

There are two types of track tooling:

• Production: provide a key function to the learning experience of that language
• Maintenance: help with track maintenance

Production tooling

There are (currently) three pieces of tooling for production:

• Test Runners: runs an exercise's tests against a student's code. (required)
• Representers: create a normalized representation of a solution (optional)
• Analyzers: automatically assess student submissions and provide mentor-style commentary. (optional)

Maintenance tooling

To help with track maintenance, one can also build:

• Test Generators: auto generate/update an exercise's tests and student's code interface. (optional)

Which tool to implement?

The production tools are more important than maintenance tools. Of the three production tools, the Test Runner should be implemented first as it enables:

• Students to solve exercises using the in-browser editor (no CLI needed).
• The website to automatically verify if an iteration passes all the tests.

To get started building a Test Runner, check the Creating a Test Runner from scratch document.

Once a test runner has been built, the next tool to work on is the Representer. There is some overlap between the goals of the Representer and the Analyzer, but we recommend building the Representer first for the following reasons:

• Representers are usually (far) easier to implement
• Representers can have a far bigger impact on the mentoring load than analyzers by empowering mentors
• Representers apply to all exercises, whereas Analyzers usually target specific exercises or a subset

To get started building a Representer, check the Creating a Representer from scratch document.

Finally, after having implemented a Representer, the last tool to build is the Analyzer. To get started building an Analyzer, check the Creating an Analyzer from scratch document.

At this point, focus should probably shift back to adding more exercises. To speed up adding new exercises, consider building a Test Generator.

Implementation

Track tooling is usually (mostly) written in the track's language.

Deployment

Production tools are packaged and run as a Docker container. Tooling images are deployed automatically using a Docker workflow.

Maintenance tools are not deployed.