In ReCodEx there are two configurations of exercise High Level Configuration (HiLC) and Low Level Configuration (LoLC). LoLC is used in backend, by workers for instance and should be general enough to create all kinds of worker tasks. On the other hand HiLC should be easy enough to be written or composed by normal application users, preferably in the form of graphical editation. But this configuration always has to be somehow stored, that is where this document comes in handy.
HiLC is divided in several parts which takes care of different things. There are ExerciseConfig, Pipelines, Limits and RuntimeConfig. From these components configuration of exercise is composed and on every submit new LoLC is compiled from it.
Represents basic exercise configuration which connects all things together. For some reasons there two formats of this configuration, one which is saved in the database and the other one which is sent back to web application. Both formats are described bellow.
* Every port either have to have defined reference to variable or it has to be blank. Actual value (for example string) is not allowed in port. If variable name is declared in port it has to exist in variables table.
* Connection between ports can be one-to-one or one-to-many from the perspective of output port. That means it is possible to have one output port which redirects variables to two or more input ports. Of course there has to be exception, it is allowed to have variable which is used only in input port, value of this variable has to be defined in pipeline variables table.
* Variables table in pipeline can contain references to external variables, these references can be directed to variables from environment configuration or exercise configuration. Variable is reference if it starts with the character '$', variable cannot be used inside variable value (textual value "hello $world", where world should be reference, is not allowed). If for some reasons is needed to use variable value which starts with dollar sign it has to be escaped with backslash, so this "\$1 million" is actual value and not a reference.
* DataInBox and DataOutBox are special boxes which are treated differently from the others. This means that their deletion or even some breaking changes may have unforseen consequences. They are used for importing and exporting files in/out from pipeline. For importing string or array of strings, variable references have to be used. Inputs or outputs from pipeline may have been connected to another pipeline or to supervisor/student inputs.
* Date boxes have to be unconditionally used for importing or exporting files from pipelines. Variable references are not usable here since these references are only substitutions. For example files uploaded by supervisor (inputs and outputs) have to have input boxes in order to be properly downloaded from fileserver during execution.
* Every (except data boxes) box is used only in BoxService for creation purposes and then through abstract Box interface which is of course using inheritance for providing general usage schema. Thanks to this, creation of new boxes is quite simple and straightforward.
