Raccode: An Eclipse Plugin for Assessment of Programming Exercises (Short Paper)

Abstract

IDEs are environments specialized in support during the development of programs. They contain several utilities to code, run, debug, and deploy programs quickly. However, they do not provide the automatic assessment of programming exercises, which is required in both learning and competitive programming environment. Therefore, IDEs are often underestimated in these contexts and replaced by basic code editors. Yet, IDEs have unique features which are essential for programmers, such as the debugger or the package explorer. This paper presents Raccode, a plugin for assessment of programming exercises in Eclipse. This plugin integrates with Mooshak to combine the diverse capabilities of an IDE, like Eclipse, with the automatic evaluation of exercises, clarification requests, printouts, balloons, and rankings. It can be used both in competitive and learning environments. The paper describes Raccode, its concept, architecture and design. © André Silva, José Paulo Leal, and José Carlos Paiva.