Codio is a tool that allows students to work in a fully cloud-hosted virtual machine. You may be wondering - what is a virtual machine? As defined by VMWare, a virtual machine is a software computer that, like a physical computer, runs an operating system and applications. In this case, you are viewing a full Linux operating system that is running on a 'host' machine in the cloud
Using Codio allows us to make sure that all students have the exact same software installed to avoid any sort of weird, machine-specific dependency issues. It also removes the need for students to install any additional software on their computer so that they can focus on the actual coding instead of getting the development environment setup
When you have your work in Codio, TA's can easily jump into your workspace if you're having an issue. They see what you see, so that they can troubleshoot your assignment in real-time without the need for you to upload your code for them to see. This lets us find the issue quicker and make sure that we're looking at the most current version of your code
You may choose to write your program in Codio's default IDE simply by clicking on the file to edit. Note that the IDE does not have many of the convenience features that make modern IDE's valuable, so consider writing it in another context then uploading
You may choose to write your program locally using an IDE of your choice, such as Sublime, Eclipse, or IDLE. Once you're ready to upload it to Codio, you may either copy/paste the content of the files from your local environment into a destination in Codio, or you may upload a file by right clicking the folder within Codio that you'd like to upload to and selecting 'Upload'. From here, drag and drop your files or click browse to locate them. Note that if you have existing files in Codio that have the same name within the folder you are attempting to upload to, you'll need to delete those files first to upload your new files
To open VScode, click on the dropdown menu of buttons in the center of the Codio toolbar at the top of your screen. The button to 'Open VSCode' will be to the right of the buttons that you will use to run or test your program
- Click on 'Open VS Code' along the menu bar at the top - this will open up a new tab containing a VS Code workspace
- To navigate around the file system within VSCode, click on the 'Explorer' button in the top-left (the icon looks like two files stacked on top of one another)
- Navigate to the file you'd like to work on
- To run your code, click on the play button (right-facing triangle) in the top right of VSCode
To run your program, click on the dropdown menu of buttons in the center of the Codio toolbar at the top of your screen. From here, select 'Run Your Program'
To run a single file in VSCode, navigate to that file, then click on the triangular 'play' button in the top right of the screen
If your assignment involves writing your own unit tests, you'll be able to run these by clicking on the dropdown menu of buttons in the center of the Codio toolbar at the top of your screen. From here, select 'Run Student JUnit Tests' to run your test files. Make sure that your test files are in the same folder that they were in when you started the assignment, otherwise the compiler may not know where to look
If your assignment contains tests for you to run before submitting, you'll be able to run these by clicking on the dropdown menu of buttons in the center of the Codio toolbar at the top of your screen. From here, select 'Run Pre-Submission Tests'
Go to the Education dropdown menu along the top. Click 'Mark as Complete', then follow the prompts
You may submit your assignment as many times as you'd like until the deadline. If you've already marked it complete, but would like to make an adjustment, you can mark it incomplete by following the same steps - go to the 'Education' dropdown menu and select 'Mark as Incomplete'. This will allow you to keep working on the assignment. Note that your submission time will be recorded as the most recent time you marked complete, so keep that in mind for assignments with late penalties