Advent of Code Helper Library & Cargo Subcommand

This library is meant to assist in the structuring, running, and creation of tests for Advent of Code challenges.

Usage

Install the command/library globally:

cargo install --git https://github.com/chrismooredev/aochelper

Then in a folder containing your AoC days, you can run the following to init the project:

cargo-aoch new <day_num>

If this is the first day, it will also create a workspace Cargo.toml for you. (This is so you can keep an editor like VSCode open to that folder, and have rust-analyzer work properly.)

Code Layout

Each year has it's own crate. Each day is a top-level separate module with the name dayXX. The modules can either be a regular rust file dayXX.rs or a module folder with dayXX/mod.rs

There exist lib.rs and main.rs files that act as runners for each day. Each module is made public so other crates can run the code. The binary calls out to this library to run each day, either specified via command line or busybox-style, where the exe name specifies the day.

• cargo aoch init [year=current]
  • [package.metadata.aoch]
• create input/ directory
• advice adding a session.txt for input auto-downloading

Problems with current one:

• Too much overhead - each day is a separate crate
• Unable to use input str's lifetime for intermediate calculations
• Hard to test if running parts in arbitrary order still works
• Able to run tests, auto-submit answer if tests are correct
• IO via stdin/stdout
• Doesn't allow submitting results
• Doesn't pull down puzzle topic
• can mess up by running `cargo aoch new

Goals

• Preview puzzle on the right (HTML Preview/etc?)
• Run tests for a day
  • auto-submit answer if smaller tests are correct
• IO via stdin/stdout to run program - integrate with debugger?

Why this one? (aka: notable features)

(over the many other AoC crates)

• Simple day creation
  • Clear seperation of parse/part1/part2 phases
• Mutable day struct
  • Can easily store any data within a custom struct
  • Day structs are managed via an AoCDay trait, which has been stubbed out for you.
  • Easy caching between parts 1 and 2 when run as a binary
• Provides a basic N-Tree implementation with ptree
• Development is test-oriented, while exposing your impl to a day binary
  • Run the program with cargo run --release for a fast run, once the algorithm is stabilized.
• Easily organizes your days within a cargo workspace
• Inclusion of typical helper libraries (data structures, itertools, etc)

This crate allows you to easily implement your solutions with the right amount of skeleton code to focus on just your projec

Day Input

In the same folder, save your personal puzzle input to input/00.txt, replacing 00 with your 2-digit day number. This will be passed to your puzzle as a &str for further parsing.

Running your Day Inputs

Day problems are implemented as tests, so you can run the regular test command to check your programs. (cargo test) Tests are auto-populated with your puzzle input, checking it as equal to zero - this can be changed once the correct answer is found.

Running the crate as a binary runs the program against the large puzzle input - this allows easy usage of release compilation, after the algorithm is solidified.

Day outputs can be any type implementing Eq - meaning puzzle outputs can be nearly any type (usize, String, a custom type, etc)

Contributing

Any improvements are welcome as GitHub Pull Requests.

Current Todos

• Get command to run properly as "cargo aoch ..." (Currently my clap code isn't configured for this)
• Cleanup test runner code?
• Be able to display multi-line inputs/outlines properly (use different colors on dedicated lines?)
• Create subcommand (update?) to auto-create days up-to current day
  • w/ auto-downloading inputs?