VPL

The VPL extension let you download, upload and evaluate the files required by a Moodle 'Virtual Programming Lab' (VPL) activity from the environment of Visual Studio Code. Of course, you can also edit and run locally these files and take advantage of VSCode for these tasks.

Features

• simple setup using the web link provided with each VPL
• upload / download tasks managed by a simple button click
• activity treeview for remote evaluation result

Release Notes

The latest release is still a prototype that has not yet been tested at scale

Documentation

A given folder is expected to work with, at most, a single VPL. All the informations related to a VPL are stored in a file named '.vscode/vpl.json' in the associated folder. The purpose of the initialization is to create this file.

Initialization of a VPL

First, open a folder of your choice, in which the VPL content will be downloaded. Then, in the VPL activity view, you can now initialize your VPL activity. This requires for you to copy/paste the web link provided at the end of each VPL description page:

The initialization will download all the required files from the given VPL. It will also create a '.vscode/vpl.json' file in your folder, which contains various informations related to the VPL:

Working on your VPL

It is now possible to work locally on the VPL files from within Visual Studio code:

• edit files, as you would do for any other local files:
• run the programs that you write in these files, just like you would do with any other local file. And it is also possible to interact with the VPL server:
• open the VPL activity view:
• evaluate your VPL as if you were using the moodle interface using the 'check' button: This will automatically save your files locally and upload them to the VPL server.
• open the activity description in a new editor tab using the 'info'button.
• upload your files to the VPL server using the 'push' button.
• download the files from your last submission saved on the server using the 'pull' button.
• reset the files to their original content as defined by the VPL, using the 'trashcan' button.
• add files to your submission by adding them to the end of the files list in the '.vscode/vpl.json' file (do not change the order of the required files, this would break your configuration).

Additional features

• place the VPL files into a 'src' folder (autodetected) or any other folder using the 'prefix' property in the '.vscode/vpl.json' file.
• choose between webSocket connection or polling for the evaluation with the boolean property 'useWebsocket'
• decide to handle some files as binary by mentioning their name in the string array property 'binaries' (only supported on the 'caseine.org' platform)