The MO Contest Environment a.k.a. MO-Eval is a simple system for conducting programming competitions similar to the -International Olympiad in Informatics – a contest -where the participants solve programming tasks, which are then evaluated off-line after the end of the -competition. It's built in a modular way, so extending to other types of programming contests -(e.g., to on-line contests like the ACM ICPC) should be -pretty easy, but it hasn't been done yet. +
The Moe Contest Environment (formerly Moe) is a system for conducting +programming competitions similar in spirit to the +International Olympiad in Informatics – +contestants solve programming tasks, submit the source code of their solutions, +which is then automatically tested on a set of test inputs. -
We use this environment at the Czech Olympiad in programming -(officially a part of the Mathematical Olympiad) since 2002 and also at the CPSPC -(Czech-Polish-Slovak Preparation Camp) when it's held in the Czech Republic. +
Moe is built in a modular way, making it easy to adapt it to the specifics +of a particular contest, to other types of tasks, or other programming languages. -
A brief description of the system and of the ideas behind it can be found in the following series +of papers published in Olympiads in Informatics: -
You can download the current release eval-1.0.1 -or browse the archive of past releases. +
Everything is also available in my FTP archive.
+News (2012-09-24): A new sandbox module (isolate) is available.
+It has very low overhead (it uses Linux kernel containers) and it is able to cope with
+multi-threaded programs. For more details, see the "New Contest Sandbox" paper above
+or the isolate's man page.
+
+
| module + | description + | status + |
|---|---|---|
| sandbox + | Runs the contestant's solution in a controlled and secure environment,
+ limiting its execution time, memory consumption and system calls.
+ We have a stable implementation (box) based on ptrace
+ and a new one (isolate) based on Linux kernel containers.
+ | works + |
| judges + | A set of utilities for comparing the solution's output with the correct + answer at a given level of strictness. + | works + |
| evaluator (a.k.a. grader) + | This module controls the whole process of grading the solution. It runs + the compilers, the sandbox and the judges as described in configuration + files. + | works + |
| evaluator v2 + | We have decided to rewrite the evaluator from scratch in Python for greater + flexibility. It will however need some more time to finish. + | in progress + |
| queue manager + | Distributes grading between a cluster of computers, each of them running + the evaluator. + | works, but needs revision + |
| submitter + | Handles submitting of solutions by contestants and passing them to the + evaluation system. Contains a server daemon and a front-end for contestants. + (If your contest uses a web-based contestant interface, you probably do not + need this, although it can serve as a clean interface between your web services + and the evaluator.) + | works, but needs revision + |
Since the last release, there were lots of changes, but they still wait -for polishing and documentation. If you are interested, you can take a peek -inside our pot: +
Moe is still under heavy development, so the best way to obtain the latest +version is directly from our Git repository at git://git.ucw.cz/moe.git. +The master branch of the repository is kept in a stable state, new development +is done on other branches and then merged to the master. You can also browse +the repository online. -
We occasionally publish snapshot tarballs in our FTP archive.
Warning: Most parts of this documentation are outdated. Please consult the papers above +to get a more up-to-date picture. +
Recently, I have published a short article -on perspectives on automatic grading systems in Olympiads -in Informatics. It mentions many of the ideas behind MO-Eval. +
Moe (or some of its modules) are used at the following contests: + +
Moe is known to work with these programming languages: + +
Adding a new language should be easy, as long as the language behaves in a sane +way (e.g., if it does not need to use a zillion threads for a trivial program +as Java does).
The environment runs under Linux on the i386 architecture. We currently use a slightly modified installation of Debian -GNU/Linux, but it will happily work with any other Linux distribution with a 2.4 or newer kernel. The only dependecies -on Linux and on i386 are in the sandbox module; porting to other architectures requires just minor changes, porting to other -UNIX systems is probably hard. Outside of that, everything should run happily on almost any system providing a reasonable -set of GNU utilities (especially bash) and Perl, possibly including MinGW or Cygwin on Windows. +
Moe is developed and tested on Linux, but all modules except the sandbox should +happily work on any UNIX-like system providing a reasonable set of GNU +utilities (especially bash) and Perl. This probably includes MinGW or Cygwin +on Windows, but we have not tested that. + +
The sandbox heavily depends on the target OS. The current version works +only on Linux with kernel version 2.6 or newer and only on the i386 and amd64 +architectures. Porting to other architectures should require only minor changes, +porting to other systems is likely to be hard. -
The isolate sandbox does not depend on CPU architecture,
+but it requires a recent Linux kernel in a configuration which might be different
+from your distribution's default.
+
+
Moe has been written by the following people: + +
isolate)
+MO-Eval has been written by Martin Mares. -Great thanks go to Jan Kara, Milan Straka and Tomas Gavenciak for their help and for many fine ideas. +
We are also thankful to Jan Kára and Milan Straka for their help and for +many fine ideas.
The MO-Eval package can be used and distributed under the terms of the GNU General -Public License version 2. +
Moe can be used and distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2.
All bug reports, suggestions and patches are welcome. Please mail them to mj@ucw.cz. +
All bug reports, suggestions and patches are welcome. Please mail them to our mailing +list moe@ucw.cz. You can ask +the list server to subscribe to this list.