Interactive Visualization with Git

Title	Visual Git Game #1
Overview	Students learn from an interactive visual git simulator / game. This activity focuses on LOCAL Git functionality (such as that on your laptop, NOT remote internet-based code repositories). See Git_Activity_4 for the next in the series.
Prerequisite Knowledge	Git_Activity and Git_Activity_2 or an introductory understanding of what SCM is about, and basic git commands.
Learning Objectives	Students will be able to ... Create a branch. Checkout a branch. Create a tag. Checkout a tag. Merge a branch into another. Rebase a branch onto another. Cherry-pick commits. Use relative commit references to refer to commits. Move branches to a different commit. Detach and move around HEAD. Explain the difference between a branch, a tag, and HEAD.

Background:

Is there background reading material?

• All material is provided in this assignment, though references below may be useful:
  • http://git-scm.com/doc
  • Git_Activity
  • Git_Activity_2

What is the rational for this activity?

• Getting familiar with git from the command line is not easy. This activity makes it a game!

Directions:

• Go to tutorial at: http://pcottle.github.io/learnGitBranching/
• Complete all activities under the Main tab
• Take screenshots of your solutions, AS YOU GO through each section
  • 15 sections in all, so 15 screenshots
• Init, commit, and then create a remote repo (on github or elsewhere online) of your screenshots
  • REMINDER: reuse of open source code is encouraged; submission of someone else's answers is academic plagiarism and will be enforced

Deliverables:

• Send URL / link of remote internet-accessible repository to instructor.
• 15 Screenshots of the solutions of each section, with commits

Assessment:

NA

Comments:

What are some likely difficulties that an instructor may encounter using this activity?

• Students might easily plagiarize or copy of each others screenshots to the solutions.
• To fight this, a REMINDER has been added in the directions.
• Teachers might also mentioned it in-class and spot-check for it in grading.

Additional Information:

Knowledge Area/Knowledge Unit	SE - Software Engineering from ACM_Body_of_Knowledge
Topic	SE Software Processes, SE Software Project Management, SE Tools and Environments
Level of Difficulty	Medium, as the advanced commands become more difficult to follow
Estimated Time to Completion	1-3 hrs
Materials/Environment	Access to Internet/Web and web browser Github account (or any online Git hosting)
Author	Stoney Jackson, Nick Yeates
Source	http://pcottle.github.io/learnGitBranching/
License	The MIT License (MIT) Copyright (c) 2012 Peter Cottle

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