ai.ed/BUILD.md

Getting started with Python Tutor

This project consists of two components:

1. A repair engine. Currently, we are relying on PyMACER as a repair engine, which is a Python adaptation of MACER: A Modular Framework for Accelerated Compilation Error Repair.. Before starting, you will need to clone the PyMACER repo from here.
2. pytutor provides the front-end experience of python tutor in VS code.

Pre-requisities

• Python 3.8.9 (64-bit). Python 3.9 does not work due to tensorflow requirement.
• Visual Studio 2019 with Desktop development with C++.
• VS Code.
• node version 14.17.0 and npm version 6.14.13 for building the VSCode extension pytutor.

PyMACER

PyMACER uses the edlib package, which wraps a C++ library. This package does not have pre-built Windows binaries (Issue #178: Binary wheels for Windows), so you will need to build from source during pip install. To prepare for this, verify that you have the Desktop development with C++ workload selected in the Visual Studio 2019 installer.

Then, execute the following commands using the x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019 so that Python will have access to the required C++ build tools. The first line will clone the pymacer repo to C:\pymacer and move required server-related files there. The next lines will create a virtual environment for Python, activate it, and then install the requirements, and start the pymacer server.

git clone https://github.com/purushottamkar/pymacer C:\pymacer
copy .\src\pymacer_server.py C:\pymacer\pymacer-vscode\
python -m venv C:\pymacer\venv
C:\pymacer\venv\Scripts\activate
cd C:\pymacer\pymacer-vscode\
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python pymacer_server.py

You may see some error messages saying ERROR: After October 2020 you may experience ... and some expected warnings related to TensorFlow. You can ignore those. Upon successful deployment of the server, the last two lines should display:

 * Debug mode: off
 * Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)

pytutor

The PyMACER server should already be running before using the extension. Open a new terminal and change your directory to src/pytutor. Then execute npm install to install the required npm packages. Then execute code . to open the project using VS Code.

Click the Run and Debug (Ctrl+Shift+D) button on the left toolbar. Then click Run Extension from the top toolbar to initiate a separate instance of VS code with the extension enabled.

Create a new python file or open an existing one. You can verify that the Python Tutor extension has loaded by the information message in the bottom right of VS Code saying: Python Tutor: Beginner Mode Activated 👩‍🎓.