Preparing Public Tests for Each Assignment

See also PreparingPublicTestsAtStartOfTerm.

This testing suite can be constructed and tested the same as any other RST testing suite. The purpose of an explicit public test suite is to offer students a reduced number of tests that confirm their conformance to a basic set of assignment expectations (function names, return types, etc.)

Preparing a testing suite

This should be ready as soon as possible after opening submissions. Ideally, this will be immediately, particularly if you're using SubmitPublicTestHook! The public tests will be in a specially-named RST testing suite: /u/csXXX/marking/assignment/test.pt. If you're using BitterSuite in your course, typically the only flag passed to computeMarks is -q, as it's unnecessary to send students copies of their own files, and the "marking scheme" is generally just a short plain-text information message.

When you create suites, you should make sure you provide appropriate MarkSchemesForRSTPublicTests.

As soon as the public test directory is visible, the tests will accessible via the pub_test_request command. It is recommended that you develop the tests in a suite directory that has a different name, and then symlink to it when it's ready. This way, if there's an error in the public tests, it also makes a fix easier; create another new suite for testing, and only update the symlink when it's ready.