CS1260 Environment Setup Guide

Welcome to CS1260: Compilers and Program Analysis! Please follow this guide to set up your development environments. You’ll have to follow the steps listed here for each assignment, but it’s pretty streamlined.

Remote development has the easiest setup, but you can also opt to develop locally. Feel free to come to office hours or post on EdStem if you’re having trouble, but please check out the FAQ section first.

Remote Development

Working with Github Codespace in your browser

This method of developing for this class will involve the least amount of setup on your end!

We strongly recommend signing up for free student benefits through GitHub Education, which will give you extra Codespaces hours per month.

1. Create a codespace inside your repository:

Click the green <>Code button, as you would to clone your repository. Instead of copying the URL, select Codespaces, then click Create Codespace on Main. Your codespace will automatically launch in the browser. It might take a few minutes for the container to build.

2. Using a codespace:

Click the <>Code button and go to the Codespaces tab, you should see the codespaces you’ve created with the current repository. You can launch a codespace in your browser or in VSCode Desktop

Working with GitHub Codespace in VSCode

1. Install the GitHub Codespace plugin.

2. In the command palette (CMD+SHIFT+P on Mac, CTRL+SHIFT+P on Windows), search for Codespaces: Create New Codespace… (if you haven’t done so on GitHub following the steps in the previous section) or Codespaces: Connect to Codespace…, then choose the repository you want to work with. VSCode might ask you to sign in to your GitHub account and give out some authorization.

Managing your Codespaces

We recommend committing and pushing your work regularly to your GitHub Classrooms repository. This way TAs can easily look at your code if you have questions, and in the result of Codespaces outages, nothing will be inaccessible.

When you complete an assignment, we recommend pushing your work and deleting the codespace. GitHub allows a limited amount of Codespaces storage per user and having a lot of assignments adds up!

Local Development

Make sure you have Docker and the VSCode Dev Container plugin installed.

• Start Docker.

• If you're using an Apple Silicon Mac, open Terminal and run docker pull jiahuac/cs1260:main --platform linux/amd64.

• Open VSCode and search for Dev Containers: Open Folder in Container… in the command palette. Choose the assignment folder (it should contain a .devcontainer folder), and VSCode will do the rest of the setup for you.

  If you see this at the bottom-left corner, you should be good to go:

• If you're experiencing container performance issues on Apple Silicon Macs, make sure Rosetta is turned on in Docker settings and try raising resource limits.

• Note: If you also have Podman installed, make sure Dev Containers in VSCode is targeting Docker.

> FYI: Docker setup

Mac:

Follow the instructions to install Docker Desktop.

Windows:

Make sure you have the wsl environment set up. Then, follow the instructions to install Docker Desktop.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. dune: ‘command not found’

Run eval $(opam env) inside your working directory. You may have to run this command again whenever you relaunch your codespace/devcontainer or switch into a new directory.

2. Windows: Git is not working, and VSCode prompted ‘could not connect to ssh-agent’

Run (Win + R) services.msc, or just search for services. In the pop-up window, scroll down to “OpenSSH Authentication Agent Properties”, set startup type to Automatic, and click Start if the service status is Stopped: