Allow submitting solution without specifying files

[ErikSchierboom]

One of the most requested features for the CLI is to be able to submit a solution without having to explicitly specify the files to submit. With Exercism v3, each exercise will have a .meta/config.json file (see https://github.com/exercism/docs/blob/main/building/tracks/concept-exercises.md#file-metaconfigjson and https://github.com/exercism/docs/blob/main/building/tracks/practice-exercises.md#file-metaconfigjson). This file contains a files property with a nested a solution string array property. The values in the solution array are the names of the files that the student should work on. In other words: these file names can be used to determine the files that should be submitted, provided no files were specified by the student.

As an example, consider the following .meta/config.json file:

{
  "files": {
    "solution": ["Lasagna.fs"],
    "test": ["LasagnaTests.fs"],
    "exemplar": [".meta/Exemplar.fs"]
  }
}

If the student runs exercism submit (no file names specified), the CLI should then interpret this as if the student ran exercism submit Lasagna.fs.

Note that if a student does specify files, the CLI should use those and ignore the .meta/config.json file.

Also note that the solution property is an array, so it can contain multiple files (which should all be submitted).

[andrerfcsantos]

I'd like to work on this!

[andrerfcsantos]

I took a look at the code and I think I have a good idea where to make the changes. I have one question though.

About the .meta/config.json file - since it is in the metadata folder and "not presented to the user" I assume this means that it will not be shipped when the student downloads the exercise and we must grab this file from the repository. Am I correct in this assumption? If so, should we fetch the file when the students tries to submit the solution and put it somewhere for future use like the .exercism folder in each exercise, or should we fetch .meta/config.json every time the student tries to submit?

[ErikSchierboom]

Good question. We definitely want the file to be present locally. Maybe the .exercism folder would be a good location for that. @iHiD any thoughts?

[haguro]

Would it make more sense to fetch config.json upon download rather than wait until the user submits the solution? Though naturally upon release existing users won't have the file at all so a fallback for it to be fetched by submit instead might be necessary anyway.

[iHiD]

It should definitely be downloaded with the exercise IMO. The issue, of course, is that for many historic solutions it won't be there. So I'd say download it and store it in .exercism, and if at submit time it is missing, download it then too.

[Rustery]

I think there should be a link to #975 issue with the same question.

[andrerfcsantos]

It should definitely be downloaded with the exercise IMO. The issue, of course, is that for many historic solutions it won't be there. So I'd say download it and store it in .exercism, and if at submit time it is missing, download it then too.

Sounds good, will implement like this.

One additional question: currently I'm grabbing the exercise config file from the track repo, but looking at the code it seems we are getting most of the info (including other config files) from the API. Is getting the file directly from the repo the intended way to do this. Is there (or will be) an API endpoint for this file?

Related to the previous question: if we do get the file from the repository, the link to the .meta file depends on if the exercise is a concept exercise or concept (e.g https://github.com/exercism/go/blob/main/exercises/practice/accumulate/.meta/config.json, note the /practice/ part of the link), which means that we also must know the kind of exercise, which I guess we can know from the config.json in the track repos (e.g https://github.com/exercism/go/blob/main/config.json). Should we also grab this file? Can we know this via the API?

[iHiD]

The API should have this file added to its list of sent files. I think it already does for v3 (@ErikSchierboom?) We don't use GitHub as a production source for anything.

[ErikSchierboom]

@andrerfcsantos @iHiD and I have discussed this, and this is what we decided upon:

1. The API will return the .meta/config.json file along with the exercise files
2. The CLI should downloaded any files in the .meta directory to the .exercism directory

This means that when an exercise is downloaded, there should be a .exercism/config.json file on the student's file system, not an .meta/config.json file. Makes sense?

See https://github.com/exercism/website/pull/1002/files for the corresponding PR.

[ErikSchierboom]

@andrerfcsantos Small bump regarding the above question: could you indicate what the status of this issue is?

[andrerfcsantos]

Hi @ErikSchierboom

It has been a couple of busy weeks and I hadn't the chance to look further into this issue.

Starting next week I'll have more free time and I plan to look into this issue.

[jodihamann]

I'm happy to pick up this issue if it's stalled out. If so, I had a quick question about the desired implementation.

At the moment, the CLI is validating that files exist and that the path is not a directory returning the following message in the latter case:

You are submitting a directory, which is not currently supported.

    %s

Please change into the directory and provide the path to the file(s) you wish to submit

    %s submit FILENAME

If the CLI is changed to allow submitting without specifying files, effectively submitting the current directory, should it also support submitting arbitrary directories?

[andrerfcsantos]

@ErikSchierboom I'm happy to hand over this issue to @jodihamann