Learning Labs for Eclipse Linux Tools

Introduction

Learning Labs is a wiki-based learning community of students and professors. It has adopted the "learning-centric" approach used by Sugar Labs. [1] Learning activities are created to help students (and curious beginners) to get involved with the Eclipse Linux Tools community. Learning Labs can also serve as a point of interaction with the Eclipse Linux Tools community. Experienced developers from the community will be invited to interact with the students via the wiki. (The students can still interact with them through the IRC channel (#eclipse-linux on Freenode) and the newsgroup [2]). Finally students can still continue with the activities after a formal course (such as JAC444) is over by the end of a semester.

The idea of Learning Labs came to Peter Liu after he was inspired by Andrew Overholt's presentation on March 9, 2010. Andrew (RedHat) told the students at Seneca College, "Announce Your Interest!" He also told the group that Eclipse Linux Tools was "a pleasant community." Indeed one of the students said that she could learn open source development as a beginner after listening to Andrew's presentation.

Learning Labs (Winter 2010)

Student Team Members

Activity Numbers	First Name	Last Name	Seneca Username	Email	Blog	IRC Nick
1, 4	Peter	Liu	pliu	peter.liu@senecac.on.ca	Wordpress	pliu
TBA	Ljubomir	Gorscak	gljubomir	gljubomir@learn.senecac.on.ca	Blogspot	ljubo
TBA	Kyle	Hodess	khodess	khodess@learn.senecac.on.ca

Learning Objectives

The activities are intended to be integrated learning exercises. By solving practical problems, the students will integrate what they have learned in various courses such as programming, operating systems and English communication. By doing some of these activities the students will acquire and enhance the following skills:

• practical research skills (i.e. Read, RE-search, Try, Ask),
• practical problem solving skills related to an open source project such as Eclipse Linux Tools,
• collaboration and communication skills (i.e. team-based problem solving).

Learning Activities (i.e. practical tasks to be completed)

Everyone on the team will help each other to solve practical problems and share their learning experiences. As a team, we will strive to make contributions to the Eclipse Linux Tools community. Within the time constraint, we might not be able to reach our ultimate goals. Moreover, the students are playing the role of trailblazers (i.e. pioneers). During the process of solving practical problems, they are generating and documenting a body of knowledge. This body of knowledge will benefit future students (and curious beginners) by at least giving them a good start.

Since this is a wik-based learning environment, students are always welcome to add learning activities according to their interests. They can also update resources and guidelines as they work on the activities.

Two ultimate goals of contribution

• Execute and enhance the Test Plan for Valgrind. [4]
• Resolve bug: Bug # 272038 - Use SWTBot for creating screenshots for documentation. [5]

List of Activities

Activity 1: Install Eclipse Linux Tools on a Fedora mahcine at CDOT (Centre for Development of Open Source Technology). [6]

• resources and guidelines
• things to be created: weekly progress report (blogging), tutorial

Activity 2: Perform manual testing on the Valgrind Tool.

• starting point: The Valgrind Test Plan [7]
• resources and guidelines
• things to be created: weekly progress summary (blogging), descriptions of test scenarios with C/C++ code (wiki)

Activity 3: Create SWTBot test cases and/or screenshots for the Valgrind plugins.

• starting point: Andrew's presentation (videos), Bug # 272038
• resources and guidelines
• more research is required here
  • possible research topics: automated GUI testing with SWTBot
• things to be created: weekly progress summary (blogging), one or more of these artifacts: tutorial, SWTBot test cases, screenshots, and research summary

Activity 4: Dive into the source code and create a patch.

• starting point: Andrew's presentation (videos)
• resources and guidelines
• possible research topics: the ins and outs of an Eclipse plug-in developed in the Linux Tools project (e.g. the Valgrind plugin)
• things to be created: weekly progress summary (blogging), one or more of these artifacts: tutorial, a patch, and research summary

Activity 5: Enhance code coverage.

• starting point: Andrew's presentation (videos)
• resources and guidelines

• things to be created: weekly progress summary (blogging), one or more of these artifacts: tutorial, code coverage report, and JUnit test cases