Ambient

Ambient is a simplified view for your Eclipse workbench.  It is a set of tools that load as a plugin and has some great features for the beginning computer scientist:

• Snarfer allows for easy assignment download straight into the workspace.
• The ability to check in and check out projects using CVS lets students work on their project from any computer or lab and always have their up-to-date work ready for them.
• The ability to submit projects for grading.
• Updates to Ambient are easy to access through the Eclipse Update tool so that you can stay on top of your coding as we make constant changes to Ambient in an effort to improve your productivity.
  

Here's an example of how a typical student workflow with Ambient:

• Download a new project or checkout an existing project
• Work on the files, compile, and test
• Check the project into a CVS repository
• Check it out again and work some more (potentially on a different computer)
• Submit the project for grading

Educators can easily set up Ambient for use in their classrooms. See "Professor Documentation" and "Server Documentation" on the Ambient info page.

Ambient was developed as part of Duke Computer Science Department's CURIOUS program during the summers of 2004 through 2007 and is distributed as open source under the Common Public License v1.0