Submitting via Git (and using Git as the storage backend)

[moschlar]

This is an idea:

Students push to a Git repository on the server and a post-receive hook starts the test runner.
Maybe in conjunction with e.g. Gitolite to manage the repositories like Gitlab does it.

This inherently would solve the problem of preserving submission history and multi-file support.

Furthermore, as in Gitlab/Github, it could still be possible to make changes via the web interface.

The downside of this approach is that it diverts from the database-only approach which currently enables full restorability of an application instance using just a database dump.

[moschlar]

Conceptual considerations:

• How are repositories mapped to Users/Teams/Events/Sheets/Assignments?
  • One repo per Team per Assignment/Sheet?
  • One repo per Team per Event?
    • How to enforce an unambiguous naming convention for directories?
      • Create directory structure on the server repository?
• How to determine test execution for multiple files and directories?
• What about Git branches?
  • Limit to only one branch in the server repository?
  • Just only test one branch by convention?
  • Test all branches?
• How shall tests be run?
  • Automatically via post-receive-hook?
  • On request via web interface?
• Shall test results and judgements be stored in the repository, too?
  • Conventions?
• How to (technically) use Git from SAUCE?
  • Call the git binary?
  • Use GitPython? https://github.com/gitpython-developers/GitPython http://packages.python.org/GitPython/0.3.2/tutorial.html