• Using Gradle
• Tests & Style Checking
• Running The Main Application
• Advanced Tasks
• Cleaning Up
• Submitting

Everything you need to do in this assignment, aside from editing code, is handled by the Gradle build system. You can run Gradle from the command line, or use it from within VS Code or IntelliJ IDE if you prefer (see below).

You do not need to install Gradle yourself, as we've included a 'Gradle wrapper' that will download a compatible version of the tool, along with various library dependencies, if required. This will be very slow the first time that it runs!

You should run Gradle commands in the cwk1 directory. On Linux, macOS or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2), use ./gradlew. On Windows, use gradlew. (The commands below assume the use of Linux, macOS or WSL2.)

NOTE: if your PC is running anti-virus software, you should add an exclusion for the cwk1 directory to avoid potential problems with Gradle.

You can simplify the use of Gradle by installing the Gradle Tasks extension. This will add a Gradle button to the side bar. Clicking on this will activate a panel in which you can see and run the Gradle tasks for the various projects.

Please use the most recent version of the IntelliJ, on your own PC. We do not support the use of older versions for the coursework, and may not be able to help you if you encounter problems.

Use the New Project button to import cwk1 as the project directory. After the project has been imported, you should be able to use the Gradle button on the right-hand edge of the IntelliJ window to activate the Gradle tool window. From here you can access a hierarchical list of all the supported Gradle tasks. The list entries you will need to use for the main tasks of the coursework are

Tasks/verification/test
Tasks/verification/style
Tasks/application/run
Tasks/application/runNoFile

Double-click on a list entry to run it for the first time. After you've done this, IntelliJ will create a 'run configuration' for it, allowing you to rerun it in future in a more convenient way. You can see the available run configurations in a drop-down box at the top of the IDE window. Just select your required configuration, then click on the Run button (the green triangle) to run it.

To run all the unit tests, recompiling code where necessary, do

./gradlew test

Test names and status (PASSED or FAILED) are listed in the terminal. A test report is also generated in HTML, containing detailed information about the tests and any failures that have occurred. You can access this by pointing your browser at build/reports/tests/test/index.html. We suggest you keep this page open in a browser tab, refreshing it after each test run, so that you always have full information available on test results.

Note that Gradle won't normally rerun tests if they have all passed, unless you've changed something in your code. You can force it to recompile everything and rerun the tests using

./gradlew test --rerun-tasks

To check coding style for all classes (apart from the tests), do

./gradlew style

If there are any style violations, you'll see a count reported in the terminal window. A full report on the violations can be viewed by pointing your browser at build/reports/checkstyle/main.html.

Treat this as a rough guide. Note that style checking is not exhaustive, and we may still penalise you on style grounds even if no violations are reported here. As with unit tests, Gradle normally won't rerun the style check unless you change something in your code.

The TrackInfo application expects an input filename to be supplied as a command line argument. If no filename is supplied, it should print a usage message, showing the user that a filename is required.

To run the application with data/walk.csv as a command line argument, do this:

./gradlew run

The expected behaviour in this case is that information on the GPS track stored in data/walk.csv will be displayed.

You can run the application without a command line argument like this:

./gradlew runNoFile

The expected behaviour here is that the program should display a usage message, telling the user that a filename must be provided on the command line.

Note: if for some reason you want to run the program on a different file, you can do this directly, bypassing Gradle, by moving into the directory containing the |.java| files and using the normal |javac| and |java| commands.

There are two optional Advanced tasks, to implement the ConvertToKML application or the ElevationPlot application - see the coursework specification for more details. You should pick just ONE of these if you wish to submit something for the Advanced task.

The ConvertToKML application should be implemented in the provided file named ConvertToKML.java. You can run it on file data/walk.csv like this:

./gradlew runKML

If the application has been implemented correctly, this Gradle task should generate its output as a file named walk.kml, in the build subdirectory.

If you wish to implement the ElevationPlot application instead, you will first need to edit the file build.gradle file and uncomment the indicated sections of it by removing the // at the start of the relevant lines. After that, the application code should be written in the provided file named PlotApplication.java.

To run the ElevationPlot application, do

./gradlew runPlot

Note: if implementing ElevationPlot, we strongly recommend using your own PC and a more recent version of Java than the one available on SoC Linux machines.

To remove all files generated by the build process, use

./gradlew clean

Your coursework solution must be submitted to Minerva as a single Zip archive, containing all source code but omitting any compiler output or other build artifacts. Such a Zip archive can be generated like so:

./gradlew submission

If you are using IntelliJ, you will be able to generate the Zip archive by double-clicking on Tasks/submission/submission in the Gradle tool window.

This will produce a Zip archive named cwk1.zip, containing everything that you need to submit. You must then submit this manually to Minerva, using the link provided in the Submit My Work area.