CMPSC 600: Senior Thesis Proposal starter

This repository contains the starter for project one (proposal template) in Computer Science 600 Fall 2021. The main directory of this repository contains the LaTeX source code for a project that is designed for use with GitHub Classroom. To learn more about the course in which these assignments were completed, please visit the Computer Science Thesis Fall 2021 Allegheny College GitHub Organization.

The LaTeX file in this repository is automatically compiled with GitHub Actions, ensuring that it compiles correctly and, moreover, that a PDF of the project proposal is available in your GitHub repository whenever a commit is tagged for a release.

Introduction

This assignment requires a researcher to write a LaTeX document, stored in the file SeniorThesisProposal.tex that proposes all of the key aspects of a senior thesis research project. Please refer to the source code in this file for an explanation of the components of a senior thesis proposal and the way in which you create them in LaTeX.

The faculty will reduce a researcher's grade for this assignment if the pdf of your completed proposal document has not been properly released before the assignment's due date on 18 October 2021 by 11:59 pm. Unless you provide the faculty with documentation of the extenuating circumstances that you are facing, no late work will be considered towards your grade for this project.

Tagging

Since this repository primarily contains LaTeX source code, the GitHub Actions configuration for it will compile the source code and automatically release a PDF of the main file whenever the last commit is associated with a Git Tag.

This will build a PDF file available in the "Releases" listing for this repository. All release numbers for your writing in this repository should adhere to the Semantic Versioning standard expected of GitHub projects. Here this means that:

• Major version releases feature a tag number change reflecting full releases; generally these start at 1.0.0
• Minor version releases indicate small changes or additions to documents; typically these increment the second digit in the version (e.g. 1.1.0)

Please note that your readers will only read the PDF generated from "tagged" releases of the file SeniorThesisProposal.pdf that has a version number greater than 1.0.0.

That is:

• if your commit is tagged SeniorThesisProposal-chompers-1.0.0, then
• the file SeniorThesisProposal.pdf should be available for download in the "Releases" tab in your GitHub repository for this project under the name SeniorThesisProposal-chompers-1.0.0.

To ensure you can create a release appropriately, make a single small change to the SeniorThesisProposal.tex and:

1. commit your file using a git commit command
2. create your first tag for this repository: type git tag senior_thesis_proposal-YOUR_USERNAME-0.1.0.
3. You are now ready to push your changes with the tag number using git push -u origin main --tags

The above steps should build a version of your project.

When you make subsequent changes to your files and perform commits and you are ready to release a new version of SeniorThesisProposal.pdf, then you should again tag your work before a push command with a tag that adheres to the Semantic Versioning standard.

Each time that you correctly execute this sequence of commands you will release a new version of your document to GitHub that is easily accessible as a PDF to you and to your first and second readers.

Updates

If a course instructor updates the provided material for this assignment and you would like to receive these updates, then you can type this command in the main directory for this assignment:

git remote add download git@github.com:allegheny-computer-science-thesis-2021/cmpsc-600-senior-thesis-proposal.git

You should only need to type this command once; typing the command additional times may yield an error message but will not negatively influence the state of your repository. Now, you are ready to download the updates provided by the course instructor by typing:

git pull download main

This second command can be run whenever the faculty need to provide you with new source code for this assignment. However, please note that, if you have edited the files that the course instructor updated, running the previous command may lead to Git merge conflicts. If this happens, you may need to manually resolve them with the help of the instructor or a teaching assistant.

Problems

If you have found a problem with this assignment's provided source code, then you can go to the Computer Science 600 Proposal Starter repository and create an issue by clicking the "Issues" tab and then clicking the green "New Issue" button. To ensure that your issue is properly resolved, please provide as many details as is possible about the problem that you experienced.

Students who find, and use the appropriate GitHub issue tracker to correctly document, a mistake in any aspect of this laboratory assignment will receive free laptop stickers and extra credit towards their grade for it.

Assistance

If you are having trouble completing any part of this project, then please talk with your first reader. In particular, if you have questions about your research project, please see your first reader. Alternatively, you may ask questions in the Slack channel for this course.