[Edu-sig] Bootable Python CDs?

[Douglas S. Blank]

On Thu, 2006-04-27 at 10:47 -0500, Ian Bicking wrote:

[snip]

> Anyway, a network syncing seems pretty reasonable.  That could be as 
> simple as zipping up the work and uploading it to a class site, and then 
> downloading it later (from any machine); you could put the code to do 
> this on the CD.

I believe that Knoppix has the ability to gather up all of the files of
a student's desktop, and save them somewhere (network, flash memory,
floppy, etc). I think that is "Save KNOPPIX configuration" from the
"KNOPPIX" menu item. Then, the student can pick right back up from where
they left off. 

This is a more general solution in that it saves everything from the
desktop, but requires Knoppix. Your solution sounds better if they were
moving between Windows, Linux, and Knoppix.

-Doug

> For something a bit more sophisticated, this is a good argument for 
> importing from URLs.  Not inlined into the code, but if you added say 
> 'http://svn.classsite.com/repos/student-name' to sys.path, and an import 
> hook that knew how to read such sites (I think both importing from svn 
> and plain HTTP are possible, since you don't have to do a listdir to 
> attempt an import).  Then all you need is a way to edit files on svn 
> directly, which is possible with webdav or maybe something programmed 
> directly into the IDE.  And if it is an svn repository, you get 
> automatic version control (you have to turn autocommit on in svn, and 
> your history will be a little chaotic because there's no explicit 
> commits, but you still get version control).
> 
> Anyway, there's quite a bit of work to do that, but uploading zip files 
> is still easy.
> 
> 
-- 
Douglas S. Blank       Computer Science
Assistant Professor    Bryn Mawr College
(610)526-6501          http://cs.brynmawr.edu/~dblank