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M2 Assignment Feedback

I have two pieces of feedback for the M2 milestone so far that I hope can be addressed by M3:

1. The starter code is out of date and contains irrelevant material. I'm of the opinion that providing starter code with an interface that is essentially 100% inconsistent with the handout isn't that helpful and adds a ton of confusion.

2. The autotester is massively unstable. I don't think it's acceptable to have to wait for manual intervention everytime something breaks with the system.

It seems that the filesystem is not properly cleared between test runs, leading to merge conflicts when rewriting git history (https://piazza.com/class/lctgp0rn94237x/post/84). Additionally, the docker containers running the services do not get killed when the tester restarts, leaving to situations like this (https://piazza.com/class/lctgp0rn94237x/post/146). It was theorized that this error is a side effect of queuing multiple tests concurrently -- but this really seems like a flaw with the tester. Queueing a new job should not blindly make it run without killing off the previous test.

~ An instructor (Gengrui Zhang) endorsed this question ~
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Anonymous Beaker 
I don’t disagree with the issues of the tester, although I do want to point out that I think having the autotester is incredibly useful and should be continued in future iterations of the course. I think the main issue with these labs is that the documentation and boilerplate code needs to be updated to avoid causing confusion, as there are a number of errors and areas where further clarification would be appreciated. Just to add to what was said, I found that the supplied unit test code mixed syntax from different versions of JUnit, which was quite a hassle to sort through.
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Jawad Tahir

Hi,

Thank you very much both of you for providing your valuable feedback. We are working on making the starter code consistent with the specification. However, there can be many ways to implement a solution, so the provided code is only a suggestion.  Please feel free to design better systems that match the specifications. :)

We are experiencing network bandwidth issues in our infrastructure. We are experiencing speeds as low as 100 kbps which causes the threads to get stuck in the source download process. We have contacted the service provider regarding the issue and we are awaiting their response. Rest assured, we are trying to work out a way to compensate for this outage.

Additionally, it also raises scalability issues. We are working on a feature that allows NTS to scale per demand. We plan to use the autoscaling feature in the future runs. 

The directory reset bug is solved as promised before. :)

Thank you for providing your feedback. We are working on your feedback. The system is working again despite the network issues. Please give it another go.

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