Conceptualize product and document it as a user guide(draft), draft a rough project plan. Complete Phase 1.
Phase 2 Project tasks
Documentation:
Recommended: Divide among yourselves who will update which parts of the document(s).
-
User Guide:
Start drafting a user guide in a convenient medium (e.g., a GoogleDoc) to describe what the product would be like when it is at v2.0. Which means, you can include commands that you may not implement in the project.
- We recommend that you follow the reference project's User Guide in terms of structure and format.
- As this is a beginning draft, don't waste time in formatting, copy editing, etc. It is fine as long as the tutor can get a rough idea of the features from this draft. You can also do just the 'Features' section and omit the other parts.
- However, do try to come up with concrete command syntax for feature that you would implement (at least for those that you will implement by v1.4).
- Include a mock-up of how your interface may look (e.g., either GUI or CLI landing screen). (GUI mock-up can be hand-drawn or created using a tool such as PowerPoint or Balsamiq).
-
Developer Guide:
Update the developer guide (target user profile, user stories, use cases, and non-functional requirements) based on the feedback from your tutors.
Admin pages:
Create/update the following pages in your project repo:
- Create the About Us page:
Use this page from the reference project as a reference for the format.
We need this page for module admin purposes. Please follow the format closely or else our scripts will not be able to give credit for your work.
- You may copy the page and replace info of SE-EDU developers with info of your team, including a suitable photo as described here.
- Including the name/photo of the supervisor/lecturer is optional.
- The photo of a team member should be
docs/images/githbub_username_in_lower_case.png e.g. docs/images/johndoe.png. If you photo is in jpg format, name the file as .png anyway.
- Indicate the different roles played and responsibilities held by each team member. You can reassign these roles and responsibilities (as explained in Admin Project Scope) later in the project, if necessary.
-
The purpose of the profile photo is for the teaching team to identify you. Therefore, you should choose a recent individual photo showing your face clearly (i.e., not too small) -- somewhat similar to a passport photo. Some examples can be seen in the 'Teaching team' page. Given below are some examples of good and bad profile photos.
-
If you are uncomfortable posting your photo due to security reasons, you can post a lower resolution image so that it is hard for someone to misuse that image for fraudulent purposes. If you are concerned about privacy, you can request permission to omit your photo from the page by writing to prof.
-
Roles indicate aspects you are in charge of and responsible for. E.g., if you are in charge of documentation, you are the person who should allocate which parts of the documentation is to be done by who, ensure the document is in right format, ensure consistency etc.
This is a non-exhaustive list; you may define additional roles.
- Team lead: Responsible for overall project coordination.
- Documentation (short for ‘in charge of documentation’): Responsible for the quality of various project documents.
- Testing: Ensures the testing of the project is done properly and on time.
- Code quality: Looks after code quality, ensures adherence to coding standards, etc.
- Deliverables and deadlines: Ensure project deliverables are done on time and in the right format.
- Integration: In charge of versioning of the code, maintaining the code repository, integrating various parts of the software to create a whole.
- Scheduling and tracking: In charge of defining, assigning, and tracking project tasks.
- [Tool ABC] expert: e.g. Intellij expert, Git expert, etc. Helps other team member with matters related to the specific tool.
- In charge of[Component XYZ]: e.g. In charge of
Model, UI, Storage, etc. If you are in charge of a component, you are expected to know that component well, and review changes done to that component in v1.3-v1.4.
Please make sure each of the important roles are assigned to one person in the team. It is OK to have a 'backup' for each role, but for each aspect there should be one person who is unequivocally the person responsible for it.
Pull Requests to your team organization
- Use PRs as the mechanism to implement the extensions this week.
- Create PRs to your team repo's master branch.
- Have these PRs merged in your team repo.
- [Only for this week] create PRs with titles following the format:
[Team id]-<your github username>-<Extension id>. Example: [CS2113T-W12-1]-johndoe-A-Gradle
- After this week, you can create PRs with any meaningful title to continue working on your project
- Each team member should review another member's PR on GitHub.
- More details about the suggested workflow:
Relevant: [Admin Appendix E(extract): Workflow ]
Workflow
Before you do any coding for the project,
- Ensure you have set the Git username correctly (as explained in Appendix E) in all Computers you use for coding.
- Read our reuse policy (in Admin: Appendix B), in particular, how to give credit when you reuse code from the Internet or classmates:
Setting Git Username to Match GitHub Username
We use various tools to analyze your code. For us to be able to identify your commits, you should use the GitHub username as your Git username as well. If there is a mismatch, or if you use multiple user names for Git, our tools might miss some of your work and as a result you might not get credit for some of your work.
In each Computer you use for coding, after installing Git, you should set the Git username as follows.
- Open a command window that can run Git commands (e.g., Git bash window)
- Run the command
git config --global user.name YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME
e.g., git config --global user.name JohnDoe
More info about setting Git username is here.
Policy on reuse
Reuse is encouraged. However, note that reuse has its own costs (such as the learning curve, additional complexity, usage restrictions, and unknown bugs). Furthermore, you will not be given credit for work done by others. Rather, you will be given credit for using work done by others.
- You are allowed to reuse work from your classmates, subject to following conditions:
- The work has been published by us or the authors.
- You clearly give credit to the original author(s).
- You are allowed to reuse work from external sources, subject to following conditions:
- The work comes from a source of 'good standing' (such as an established open source project). This means you cannot reuse code written by an outside 'friend'.
- You clearly give credit to the original author. Acknowledge use of third party resources clearly e.g. in the welcome message, splash screen (if any) or under the 'about' menu. If you are open about reuse, you are less likely to get into trouble if you unintentionally reused something copyrighted.
- You do not violate the license under which the work has been released. Please do not use 3rd-party images/audio in your software unless they have been specifically released to be used freely. Just because you found it in the Internet does not mean it is free for reuse.
- Always get permission from us before you reuse third-party libraries. Please post your 'request to use 3rd party library' in our forum. That way, the whole class get to see what libraries are being used by others.
- This also ensures you learn the ethics to attribute credits to the correct stake holders/owners.
Giving credit for reused work
Given below are how to give credit for things you reuse from elsewhere. These requirements are specific to this module i.e., not applicable outside the module (outside the module you should follow the rules specified by your employer and the license of the reused work)
If you used a third party library:
- Mention in the
README.adoc (under the Acknowledgements section)
- mention in the Project Portfolio Page if the library has a significant relevance to the features you implemented
If you reused code snippets found on the Internet e.g. from StackOverflow answers or
referred code in another software or
referred project code by current/past student:
- If you read the code to understand the approach and implemented it yourself, mention it as a comment
Example:
{Your implmentation of the reused solution here ...}
- If you copy-pasted a non-trivial code block (possibly with minor modifications renaming, layout changes, changes to comments, etc.), also mark the code block as reused code (using
@@author tags)
Format:
{Reused code (possibly with minor modifications) here ...}
Example of reusing a code snippet (with minor modifications):
persons = getList()
Collections.sort(persons, new Comparator<CustomData>() {
@Override
public int compare(CustomData lhs, CustomData rhs) {
return lhs.customInt > rhs.customInt ? -1 : (lhs.customInt < rhs.customInt) ? 1 : 0;
}
});
return persons;
What to and what not to annotate
-
Annotate both functional and test code There is no need to annotate documentation files.
-
Annotate only significant size code blocks that can be reviewed on its own e.g., a class, a sequence of methods, a method.
Claiming credit for code blocks smaller than a method is discouraged but allowed. If you do, do it sparingly and only claim meaningful blocks of code such as a block of statements, a loop, or an if-else statement.
- If an enhancement required you to do tiny changes in many places, there is no need to annotate all those tiny changes; you can describe those changes in the Project Portfolio page instead.
- If a code block was touched by more than one person, either let the person who wrote most of it (e.g. more than 80%) take credit for the entire block, or leave it as 'unclaimed' (i.e., no author tags).
- Related to the above point, if you claim a code block as your own, more than 80% of the code in that block should have been written by yourself. For example, no more than 20% of it can be code you reused from somewhere.
- 💡 GitHub has a blame feature and a history feature that can help you determine who wrote a piece of code.
-
Do not try to boost the quantity of your contribution using unethical means such as duplicating the same code in multiple places. In particular, do not copy-paste test cases to create redundant tests. Even repetitive code blocks within test methods should be extracted out as utility methods to reduce code duplication.
Individual members are responsible for making sure code attributed to them are correct.
If you notice a team member claiming credit for code that he/she did not write or use other questionable tactics, you can email us (after the final submission) to let us know.
-
If you wrote a significant amount of code that was not used in the final product,
- Create a folder called
{project root}/unused
- Move unused files (or copies of files containing unused code) to that folder
- use
//@@author {yourGithubUsername}-unused to mark unused code in those files (note the suffix unused)
e.g.
//@@author johndoe-unused
method 1 ...
method 2 ...
Please put a comment in the code to explain why it was not used.
-
If you reused code from elsewhere, mark such code as //@@author {yourGithubUsername}-reused (note the suffix reused)
e.g.
//@@author johndoe-reused
method 1 ...
method 2 ...
-
You can use empty @@author tags to mark code as not yours when RepoSense attribute the to you incorrectly.
-
Code generated by the IDE/framework, should not be annotated as your own.
-
Code you modified in minor ways e.g. adding a parameter. These should not be claimed as yours but you can mention these additional contributions in the Project Portfolio page if you want to claim credit for them.
At the end of the project each student is required to submit a Project Portfolio Page.
-
Objective:
- For you to use (e.g. in your resume) as a well-documented data point of your SE experience
- For us to use as a data point to evaluate your,
- contributions to the project
- your documentation skills
-
Sections to include:
-
Overview: A short overview of your product (can use the product introduction you wrote earlier) to provide some context to the reader.
-
Summary of Contributions:
- Code contributed: Give a link to your code on Project Code Dashboard, which should be
https://nuscs2113-ay1920s1.github.io/dashboard/#=undefined&search=github_username_in_lower_case (replace github_username_in_lower_case with your actual username in lower case e.g., johndoe). This link is also available in the Project List Page -- linked to the icon under your photo.
- Features implemented: A summary of the features you implemented. If you implemented multiple features, you are recommended to indicate which one is the biggest feature.
- Other contributions:
- Contributions to project management e.g., setting up project tools, managing releases, managing issue tracker etc.
- Evidence of helping others e.g. responses you posted in our forum, bugs you reported in other team's products,
- Evidence of technical leadership e.g. sharing useful information in the forum
-
Relevant descriptions/terms/conventions: Include all relevant details necessary to understand the document, e.g., conventions, symbols or labels introduced by you, even if it was not introduced by you.
-
Contributions to the User Guide: Reproduce the parts in the User Guide that you wrote. This can include features you implemented as well as features you propose to implement.
The purpose of allowing you to include proposed features is to provide you more flexibility to show your documentation skills. e.g. you can bring in a proposed feature just to give you an opportunity to use a UML diagram type not used by the actual features.
-
Contributions to the Developer Guide: Reproduce the parts in the Developer Guide that you wrote. Ensure there is enough content to evaluate your technical documentation skills and UML modelling skills. You can include descriptions of your design/implementations, possible alternatives, pros and cons of alternatives, etc.
-
If you plan to use the PPP in your Resume, you can also include your SE work outside of the module (will not be graded)
-
Format:
-
File name: [TEAM_ID]-[Your Name]PPP.pdf e.g., [AY1920S1-CS2113T-F10-3][John Doe]PPP.pdf
-
Use one-half spacing between the lines for legibility
-
Follow this example. A PDF version of the same has been uploaded on LumiNUS.
-
💡 You are free to choose any (collaborative) software to write the documents. However, try to follow the format of the sample user guide, developer guide and PPP given.
-
Do note that extra effort is needed in duplicating and maintaining consistency across UG/DG and PPP. This is a cost of not using automated document generation.
-
It is assumed that all contents in the PPP were written primarily by you.
If any section is written by someone else e.g. someone else described the feature in the User Guide but you implemented the feature, clearly state that the section was written by someone else (e.g. Start of Extract [from: User Guide] written by Jane Doe). Reason: Your writing skills will be evaluated based on the PPP
-
Page limit:
| Content |
Limit |
| Overview + Summary of contributions |
0.5-1 (soft limit) |
| Contributions to the User Guide |
2-4 (soft limit) |
| Contributions to the Developer Guide |
3-5 (soft limit) |
| Total |
5-8 (strict) |
-
Reason for page limit: These submissions are peer-graded (in the PE) which needs to be done in a limited time span.
-
If you have more content than the limit given above, you can give a representative samples of UG and DG that showcase your documentation skills. Those samples should be understandable on their own. For the parts left-out, you can give an abbreviated version and refer the reader to the full UG/DG for more details.
-
It's similar to giving extra details as appendices; the reader will look at the UG/DG if the PPP is not enough to make a judgment. For example, when judging documentation quality, if the part in the PPP is not well-written, there is no point reading the rest in the main UG/DG. That's why you need to put the most representative part of your writings in the PPP and still give an abbreviated version of the rest in the PPP itself. Even when judging the quantity of work, the reader should be able to get a good sense of the quantity by combining what is quoted in the PPP and your abbreviated description of the missing part. There is no guarantee that the evaluator will read the full document.
Follow the forking workflow in your project up to v1.1. In particular,
- Get team members to review PRs. A workflow without PR reviews is a risky workflow.
- Do not merge PRs failing CI. After setting up Travis, the CI status of a PR is reported at the bottom of the PR page. The screenshot below shows the status of a PR that is passing all CI checks.
If there is a failure, you can click on the Details link in corresponding line to find out more about the failure. Once you figure out the cause of the failure, push the a fix to the PR.
After completing v1.1, you can adjust process rigor to suit your team's pace, as explained below.
-
Reduce automated checks: You can also reduce the rigor of checkstyle checks to expedite PR processing.
-
Switch to a lighter workflow: While forking workflow is the safest, it is also rather heavy. You an switch to a simpler workflow if the forking workflow is slowing you down. Refer the textbook to find more about alternative workflows: branching workflow, centralized workflow. However, we still recommend that you use PR reviews, at least for PRs affecting others' features.
You can also increase the rigor/safety of your workflow in the following ways:
- There is no requirement for a minimum coverage level. Note that in a production environment you are often required to have at least 90% of the code covered by tests. In this project, it can be less. The less coverage you have, the higher the risk of regression bugs, which will cost marks if not fixed before the final submission.
- You must write some tests so that we can evaluate your ability to write tests. (Please refer to Expectations on Lines of Code for LoC requirement).
- How much of each type of testing should you do? We expect you to decide. You learned different types of testing and what they try to achieve. Based on that, you should decide how much of each type is required. Similarly, you can decide to what extent you want to automate tests, depending on the benefits and the effort required.
Project Management → Revision Control →
In the forking workflow, the 'official' version of the software is kept in a remote repo designated as the 'main repo'. All team members fork the main repo create pull requests from their fork to the main repo.
To illustrate how the workflow goes, let’s assume Jean wants to fix a bug in the code. Here are the steps:
- Jean creates a separate branch in her local repo and fixes the bug in that branch.
- Jean pushes the branch to her fork.
- Jean creates a pull request from that branch in her fork to the main repo.
- Other members review Jean’s pull request.
- If reviewers suggested any changes, Jean updates the PR accordingly.
- When reviewers are satisfied with the PR, one of the members (usually the team lead or a designated 'maintainer' of the main repo) merges the PR, which brings Jean’s code to the main repo.
- Other members, realizing there is new code in the upstream repo, sync their forks with the new upstream repo (i.e. the main repo). This is done by pulling the new code to their own local repo and pushing the updated code to their own fork.
Duke tasks ( team)
- Starting this week, you will only work on your team repo.
- As a team implement the following extensions.
- Create PRs and have them merged in the team repo.
- Do note that the
A-* extensions are useful in your project as well.
- As earlier, tag the extension and push your changes to your team repository's master branch once it has been merged.
A-* Extensions
- Automate build process with Gradle in your project
A-Gradle: Build automation with Gradle
A-Gradle
↳ Automate project builds using Gradle
Use Gradle to automate some of the build tasks of the project. Refer to the Gradle tutorial at the Duke repo (i.e., the repo you forked from) to find how to set up Gradle for your project.
- Minimal: Learn how to use Gradle when it is already set up.
- Recommended: Learn how to tweak the Gradle gradle set up of for a project.
- Stretch Goal: Learn how to set up Gradle for a project.
A-CheckStyle: Enforce code quality
A-CheckStyle
↳ Use CheckStyle
Use checkStyle to detect coding style violations.
If you are using Gradle for your project, refer to the Gradle tutorial at the Duke repo (i.e., the repo you forked from) to find how to use CheckStyle via Gradle.
A-Gradle
↳ Automate project builds using Gradle
Use Gradle to automate some of the build tasks of the project. Refer to the Gradle tutorial at the Duke repo (i.e., the repo you forked from) to find how to set up Gradle for your project.
- Minimal: Learn how to use Gradle when it is already set up.
- Recommended: Learn how to tweak the Gradle gradle set up of for a project.
- Stretch Goal: Learn how to set up Gradle for a project.
- Learn to release a JAR on GitHub
- You need to create a JAR using Gradle and then drop the JAR in the release you make on GitHub
- Title the release as
mid-v1.1
A-Jar: Make a release
A-Jar
↳ Package the App as a JAR file
Package the app as an executable JAR file so that it can be distributed easily.
If you are using Gradle for your project, refer to the Gradle tutorial at the Duke repo (i.e., the repo you forked from) to find how to create a jar file using Gradle.
A-Gradle
↳ Automate project builds using Gradle
Use Gradle to automate some of the build tasks of the project. Refer to the Gradle tutorial at the Duke repo (i.e., the repo you forked from) to find how to set up Gradle for your project.
- Minimal: Learn how to use Gradle when it is already set up.
- Recommended: Learn how to tweak the Gradle gradle set up of for a project.
- Stretch Goal: Learn how to set up Gradle for a project.
A-Travis: Continuous Integration optional
A-Travis
↳ Use Travis for CI
Use Travis (and GitHub) to perform Continuous Integration (CI).
- [Optional] Learn to add a dependency and use a library in your project
- Do note that you have to comply with the library usage guidelines (You can refer to the notices tab for this week)
A-Libraries: External libraries optional
A-Libraries
↳ Use external libraries
Use third-party libraries in your project. For example, you can use the Natty library to parse strings into meaningful dates.
B-* Extensions
- Create a branch from the base code of your team project in your own forks to implement these extensions
- Create PRs to your team repo master branch to incorporate the contributions.
- Each member must implement at least one unique
B- extension
- Ensure you write some unit tests for these increments using JUnit
B-Reminders: Reminders
B-Reminders
↳ Reminders for tasks
Provide a way to get reminders about tasks e.g., remind the user about upcoming deadlines.
B-FindFreeTimes: Free time slots
B-FindFreeTimes
↳ Find free times
Provide a way for the user to find free times e.g., when is the nearest day in which I have a 4 hour free slot?.
B-ViewSchedules: View schedules
B-ViewSchedules
↳ View schedules
Provide a way to view tasks in the form of a schedule e.g., view the schedule for a specific date.
B-DetectAnomalies: Detect scheduling anomalies
B-DetectAnomalies
↳ Detect scheduling anomalies
Deal with schedule anomalies e.g., detect if a task being added clashes with another task in the list.
B-Snooze: Snooze
B-Snooze
↳ Snoozing/postponing tasks
Provide a way to easily snooze/postpone/reschedule tasks.
B-TentativeScheduling: Tentative scheduling
B-TentativeScheduling
↳ Tentative scheduling
Provide a way for an event to be tentatively scheduled in multiple slots, and later to be confirmed to one the slots.
B-RecurringTasks: Recurring task
B-RecurringTasks
↳ Recurring tasks
Provide support for managing recurring tasks e.g., a weekly project meeting.
B-DoAfterTasks: Do-after tasks
B-DoAfterTasks
↳ 'Do after' tasks
Support the managing of tasks that need to be done after a specific time/task e.g., return book after the exam is over.
B-DoWithinPeriodTasks: Time bound tasks
B-DoWithinPeriodTasks
↳ 'Do within a period' task
Provide support for managing tasks that need to be done within a certain period e.g., collect certificate between Jan 15 and 25th.
B-FixedDurationTasks: Fixed duration tasks
B-FixedDurationTasks
↳ Unscheduled tasks with a fixed duration
Provide support for managing tasks that takes a fixed amount of time but does not have a fixed start/end time e.g., reading the sales report (needs 2 hours).