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<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><i><b>Sorry for the length
of the email</b></i>, but being a formal contest (and one in
which increasing interest is growing even outside DFW), I need to
clarify some things for people who didn't make it to the meeting
either on or off line last night.<br>
<br>
Here goes...<br>
</font>
<h1><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">The DFW Perl Mongers
Winter of Code Deduplication Hackathon</font></h1>
<h1> </h1>
<h3><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Participation</font></h3>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"> Any Perl Monger anywhere
may participate so long as he/she is vouched for by their PM group
leader, prominent Perl community member, or CPAN author with a
module released prior to this contest.<br>
</font>
<h3><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Hackathon Server
Accounts</font></h3>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"> On a testing/development
contest server is being provided. Everyone who wants to
participate will get an SSH login and optionally a perlbrew if
they ask for it. They can also install their own brew. Anyone
who wants an account should send their public SSH key to <span
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated">dfwpm_at_internetalias_dot_net</span>.
Password-based logins won't be allowed. This server will give
everyone the chance to develop their code for 1 month in the same
environment in which it will be benchmarked during the formal
head-to-head contest on January 8th (which will be broadcast live
in a Google Hangout as usual, so physical presence at the Dallas
Makerspace isn't necessary).<br>
<br>
1GB disk space can be consumed per participant; space consumption
will be monitored as will bandwidth consumption. ("Don't be a
jerk"). Contestants should rely on github for code storage
because I will wipe and recreate the server before the actual
contest. Disk storage should therefore be considered volatile and
git should be leveraged as the mechanism for data and code that
contestants want to be persistent across the server rebuild. </font>
<h3><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Environment</font></h3>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"> The server will be
running Debian Linux 7, stable branch Wheezy. It will be hosted
on port 2222 at perl.atrixnet.com and a security lockout mechanism
is in place for four failed logins in a row (i.e.- don't try to
log in before I set up your key).<br>
<br>
As stated above, a full rebuild of the server will happen a couple
days or so before the live contest at next month's meeting on
humpday January 8th in order to ensure fairness and prevent foul
play. When the contest server comes back online I will restore
everyone's code via the cloning of their repo, but their system
logins will not be restored -- no one will have access to the
competition server at that time except the judges (Tommy Butler
and John Fields). David Golden of NY.pm and Patrick Michaud of
our local group are honorary judges.<br>
</font>
<h3><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Conduct</font></h3>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"> In the spirit of our
community I only ask that no one do or try to do anything
unethical, malicious, unfair, or abusive on the server --
including being a resource hog. Basically any rules that apply at
a YAPC event apply to this hackathon, as do the dictates of common
sense and decency :)<br>
</font>
<h3><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Test Data</font></h3>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"> The test data will be on
a read-only volume mounted read-only on /dedup. The deduplication
code from each contestant is simply required to accurately detect
all duplicate files randomly generated in a 100 gigabyte mass of
also randomly generated files and directories. The individual
files and directories will have random names as well. Detect the
duplicate files -- It's that simple. The volume will have both
symlinks and hardlinks and code will need to correctly handle
that. If code relies on heuristics of the data volume in order to
achieve performance improvements, the author of such code will be
disappointed; the random data will be randomly regenerated again
before the contest and will not have the same number of
symlinks/hardlinks, files, same filenames, file sizes, directories
or directory depths. All contestants will be running their code
against the same data volume.<br>
</font>
<h3><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Contest Rules</font></h3>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"> ...Are founded on the
information in <a
href="https://googledrive.com/host/0B4iHttD7hE94YVE2SWhwLXR2Q2s/DFW.pm%20Hackathon%20Dups.html">the
slide presentation</a>. All code will be tested against the
same Perl (the latest available stable version before the contest,
likely 5.18.0) and the best-out-of-two benchmark time will be used
for each participant (because of hardware-based CPU and disk
caching that we can't prevent). No code should write to disk or
in-memory filesystems such as /run/shm. If we catch the code
doing writes, it is automatic grounds for disqualification. This
is to prevent results-caching between runs.<br>
<br>
Participants should disclose ahead of time what top-level CPAN
modules they need installed for the correct operation of their
code. The code and contestants should conform to the rules set
forth in <a
href="https://googledrive.com/host/0B4iHttD7hE94YVE2SWhwLXR2Q2s/DFW.pm%20Hackathon%20Dups.html">the
slides</a> from last night's Perl Mongers meeting. The code
will be reviewed by the judge panel prior to execution.
Unintelligible or obfuscated code won't be accepted. Read the
slides for further information.<br>
<br>
Rules are subject to amendment by a majority vote of the judging
panel, in the event that rules must be modified to insure fairness
or fix problems that arise which prevent smooth, convenient
execution of the contest. Your suggestions are
always welcome.<br>
<br>
Please let us know your thoughts and remember to mail in your
public SSH key to dfwpm_at_internetalias_dot_net if you are going
to participate.<br>
<br>
--Tommy Butler, John Fields<br>
<br>
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