Git Exam is a specification for an exam that tests students on their abilities to work with Git repositories. It supports automated grading via Submitty.
Git Exam is developed and maintained by the Rensselaer Center for Open Source.
The source code for the automatic grader is located in the Grader directory at the root of the repository. There’s also an Xcode project file at the root of the repository for easy development in Xcode. (Xcode is the recommended IDE for Git Exam development.)
You must generate in the Keys directory at the root of the repository a separate ED25519 key pair for each student. Each private key must have the relevant student’s RCS ID as its filename, and each public key must have the same filename as the corresponding private key but with an added “.pub” suffix. As the instructor, distribute the public key (Keys/*.pub, where “*” is the student’s RCS ID) to your students. Do not distribute the private keys to anyone. You will, however, need to include both the public key and the private key for all key pairs in the auto-grading configuration that you upload to Submitty.
If a Keys directory at the root of the repository doesn’t yet exist, then create it. Then, from the root of the repository, run ssh-keygen -t ed25519. When you’re prompted, specify “Keys/[rcs id]”, where “[rcs id]” is the student’s RCS ID, as the path. Leave the passphrase empty. You could potentially automate this with a shell script based on a list of RCS IDs; consult the manual for ssh-keygen to learn how to invoke it without user interaction.
To deploy to Submitty, zip the contents of the Auto-Grading Configuration directory (but not the directory itself) and upload the zip archive to Submitty. (You must have previously built the appropriate grade binary and collected it in Auto-Grading Configuration/custom_validation_code.) Make sure to select “Students will submit one or more files by direct upload to the Submitty website” for “Gradeable Type” on Submitty.
The project includes several helpful shell commands for developing, debugging, and building the automated grader. They are all located in the Commands directory at the root of the repository.
The Collect command finds deploy keys and built products for Linux on x86_64 and copies them into the Auto-Grading Configuration/custom_validation_code directory, where they can be included in the zip archive that you deploy to Submitty.
The Reset command deletes the existing test repository in the Repository directory and re-clones the specified public source repository. The first command-line argument must be the clone URL for the public source repository, and the second must be the clone URL for an empty private repository.
The Submit command comes in two “flavors”: one for macOS and one for Ubuntu. It mimics what happens on a Submitty server when a student submits the SSH clone URL for their private GitHub repository. That SSH clone URL must be supplied as the second command-line argument. The first command-line argument must be the RCS ID of the student who’s submitting the exam. (For testing purposes, this can be any arbitrary string as long as there’s a private key the filename of which is that string and a public key the filename of which is the same as the private key but with an added “.pub” suffix. The public key must also have already been added as a deploy key for the GitHub repository that the SSH clone URL locates.) After executing the Submit command, you can run the test cases manually by launching the grade executable in the Submission directory. Supply “part*”, where “*” is the test-case/part number, as the first command-line argument.