CS 343 Concurrent and Parallel Programming

Assignments

All assignments must be done individually, unless the assignment is explicitly designated as a group assignment. All members of a group receive the same grade (no exceptions). Only one member of a group submits the assignment. The instructors/staff do not arbitrate group disputes; group members must handle any and all problems. A group assignment may be done individually, but it must be understood that the amount of work is significantly greater and no extra marks are given for this additional work.

Review the Assignment Guidelines and C++ Coding Guidelines before starting each assignment. You will lose marks if these guidelines are not followed.

Submissions

Assignment submission is electronic. Use the submit command to electronically copy assignment files to the course account:

  submit cs343 N dir where N=1..6

• Submit rejects all text (*txt) files > 500 lines in length, where lines > 120 characters are folded into multiple lines.
• txt files must be plain text (ASCII). No "word" documents.
• Submit early and often (no penalty)!
• Use Compilation Request to ensure your makefile is set up correctly.
• Use gmake for executing all makefile files.
• Use g++/u++ for compiling programs.

Submission Information

Verify files submitted against expected files. Check time stamps and sizes to be sure you have submitted the correct versions. Note *.txt files over 500 lines in length are automatically rejected by submit.

Compilation Request

After submitting an assignment, you can verify if your makefile is correctly formed. Select the assignment number and press the button to start the request.

This facility checks you have:

1. submitted a makefile or Makefile
2. submitted all required pieces of code
3. makefile works properly with GNU make
4. no compilation errors

Tests are run and results emailed to the specified userid every 5 minutes. Delays can occur if email is backlogged or if the system is heavily loaded.

Lates

• Assignments are due on the due-date at the time specified on the top of the assignment (usually 22:00).
• 2 assignments may be up to 2 days late; except for the last assignment if due on the last day of classes.
• To determine the number of lates used/available press the button.

  If you are currently using a late, it is not included in the count.

• An assignment not handed in receives a mark of 0, unless there is a documented reason.
• If a documented reason is supplied, the weight of the missing assignment is distributed across the other assignments. A copy of the documented reason must be given to the instructor.

Marking

• An assignment is marked on the follow criteria:
  1. correctness
  2. documentation
  3. testing (sometimes optional)
  4. style and efficiency
• Correctly working code is only worth 1/4 of the marks.
• Documentation is very important.
• If you do not hand in testing documentation, testing gets 0.
• If your makefile does not work, or code does not compile, the correctness mark is zero.
• If you complete < 50% of the code, other marks are scaled appropriately.
• Use only relative paths in includes, not absolute (unless specified otherwise in assignment).

Returning

• Assignments are returned at the end of class after they are marked.
• You may not pick up an assignment for a friend.
• Any assignment not picked up in class can be retrieved from the Instructional Assistant during an office hour.
• Unclaimed assignments are retained for one month after term grades become official in quest. After that time, they are destroyed in compliance with UW's confidential shredding procedures.

Remarking Policy

You have two weeks from when an assignment is handed back to see the TA who marked the assignment and get any mark appeals dealt with. The list of TAs and their office hours are located under Teaching Assistants.

Note: The entire assignment is examined when remarking; therefore, the assignment grade could receive a lower mark than the current mark.

Obtaining a UNIX Group

To facilitate file sharing on group assignments, UNIX provides a sharing mechanism based on a named group of userids. The group name can then be associated with files (see chgrp) along with specific file permissions (see chmod). All users associated with the group name can then access these files, modulo the specific file permissions set for each file.

To obtain a UNIX group:

1. One member of the group creates a file, group.txt, containing the userids of both members:

   uwuserid1
   uwuserid2
   

   Make sure the file is only two lines in length, only UW userids are present (do not include @student.cs.uwaterloo.ca after the userid), and there is a newline at the end of each line rather than a ^M (see man dos2unix).
2. This file is then submitted using:

   submit cs343 group .
   

   which only accepts group.txt.

Approximately every 4 hours, the group names are generated and emailed back to the submitter.

Note, the project submission also includes the file group.txt but this time the file is so the TAs know who gets the grade for the assignment.

Work Environment

Assignments must compile and run on one of the linux.student.cs computers. See CPU/Applications Hosts for a complete list of server computers.