601.229 (S21): Resources

This page has links to useful resources.

Information

This section has links to some information resources you might find useful.

Practice problems and exams

x86-64 assembly programming resources

Software

This section covers the software you’ll be using in working on programming assignments.

Linux

For the programming assignments, you will need to use a recent x86-64 (64 bit) version of Linux.

Important: the code you submit is required to run correctly on Ubuntu 18.04, since that is the version of Linux that Gradescope uses.

Here are some options for getting your development environment set up.

You can install Ubuntu 18.04 directly on your computer. This is a good option if you are comfortable installing operating systems from installation media.

On Windows 10, you can use the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Once WSL is enabled, you can install Ubuntu 18.04 from the Microsoft Store. Make sure that you install the tools listed below. Using WSL is an excellent option if you are comfortable doing your development work inside a terminal session.

On MacOS and Windows, you can use virtual machine software such as VirtualBox to run Ubuntu 18.04 as a guest OS. If you do a web search for “ubuntu 18.04 image for virtualbox” you will find pre-made OS images that you can download. (I can’t directly vouch for any of these, so be careful.) You will likely need to enable hardware virtualization support in your computer’s BIOS to allow VirtualBox to run correctly. We recommend dedicating a significant amount of RAM (at least 4GB) to the virtual machine (this should be fine as long as your computer has at least 8 GB of RAM.)

It is possible to use the CS ugrad machines to do your development work. Note, however, that this environment is not based on Ubuntu 18.04, and your programs may be behave differently. A correctly-written program that is free from memory errors (such as using uses of uninitialized values) should, in general, behave identically on the ugrad machines and Gradescope, but ultimately it is your responsibility to ensure that your programs work under Ubuntu 18.04.

Tools

Some of the tools you’ll want to have are:

All of these are available by default on the Ugrad computers.

To install on an Ubuntu-based system:

sudo apt-get install gcc g++ make ruby valgrind git

You’ll also want to install a text editor. Emacs and Vim are good options:

sudo apt-get install emacs vim