Typical Workflow for CSc 103

In what follows, you should find a dense reference for the common tasks you’ll be doing at some point after each class. This assumes you’ve already set everything up.

Get the new stuff

Soon after each lecture, I will post the notes to the csc103-lectures git repository. If you cloned the repository in your home directory, you can get my updates by running:

$ cd ~/csc103-lectures/
$ git pull --no-edit

If you hadn’t committed your changes yet, do so with something like this:

$ git commit -a -m 'saving my work.'

Do some exercises

1. Go to the desired folder, e.g. via cd ~/csc103-lectures/02/.
2. Do some work… remember that you can search in vim with the ‘/’ command in normal mode.
3. Review what you’ve done with git diff, and commit changes.

Efficiency tips

• Managing screen space: I would recommend having two windows side by side – one with a terminal (pointed at the directory you’re working in), and the other with your editor. Maybe on another workspace, have a browser open with any references you’re using.
• Speeding up the build cycle: Most of the time I will provide makefiles for lectures and projects. If you are using vim and if there is a makefile, then hitting \c will save and compile in one step. Moreover, this will also make a list of any errors or warnings from the compiler. You can go through these with ]q and [q keybindings.¹ (This jumps to the line of the next / previous error, and shows the error message at the bottom of the screen.) If you’re not using vim, then perhaps use a command like make && ./myprogram in the terminal. Be sure to save your work before running it though!
• Get a quick list of the ‘TODO’ exercises: Running the command ack -A3 -w 'TODO' from the lectures directory will show a list of all the exercises from the notes.² If you are searching through multiple folders, you can keep the output sorted by adding the --sort-files flag to the ack command.
• By default, when opening a new terminal in i3 you will be in your home directory, and not the working directory of the current window. For the special case of vim, this is easy to fix: just add this line to your ~/.vimrc somewhere: nnoremap \t :silent exec "!sh -c '(exec xterm &)'"<CR>. Then typing \t in vim will open a terminal with your current directory.

Setting things up

In case you are here for the first time, some set-up instructions:

1. Be sure you’ve read the git tutorial first.

2. Now clone the repository for lectures:

    $ git clone https://bitbucket.org/wes_ccny/csc103-lectures.git

3. There should now be a csc103-lectures folder. Inside, you’ll find other folders, each corresponding to a day of lecture.

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