Step-By-Step for Getting CourseMarker to run

CourseMarker is used by most (or all?) programming modules especially Java and C++ courses to grade assignments in less than a minute. However, the setup procedure requires technical knowledge of paths and JDK installations.

Hope this helps all those struggling to get this thing to run.

1. We need the latest JDK ("JDK 5.0 Update 8" as of this writing) from this page ( http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp ). If you are just developing C++ applications, you can just download the runtime ("Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 Update 8" as of this writing) only. Save the file in your Desktop.
2. Get cmc.zip from your course module's website. Due to copyright reasons, I can't release it here. Save it in your Desktop.
3. Cut CMC.ZIP (CourseMarker Client) and put it in C:\ (not in any folder). You can access C:\ by clicking My Computer, then Local Disk (C:).
4. Right-click the file, click Extract All. You can also use your favourite utility (such as WinZip, WinRAR) to extract the files.
5. Click Next. Extract to C:\ as follows
6. Follow the prompts (keep clicking Next) to extract the files.
7. You should now have a folder named CMC in your C drive.
8. Let's install the JDK which we downloaded in Step 1. Double-click the file and follow default prompts. .. after a couple of prompts and copying files ...
9. Now we need to open the respective bat file and edit it to point to your JDK and CMC folder correctly. Navigate to your CMC folder located in your C drive. You should have some batch files like the following
10. Your module should be one of them. We are only interested in the GUI versions, but all of them follow the same standard. RIGHT-click the file that corresponds to your module and ends with gui, and select Edit. You should get something like the below: We're only interested in changing the shaded area. Don't touch the rest.
11. These are the settings we need to change to point to our own folders. You only need to make changes to the 5 lines. set CM3_CLIENT_HOME=C:\cmc (OK!) set JAVA_HOME=C:\jdk1.5 (NOT OK! - Change to "C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_08"* inclusive of double quotes) set CMHOMEDIR=H: (NOT OK! - Change to "C:\cmc\Home" exclusive of double quotes) set CMHOME=%CMHOMEDIR%\CMhome\cs1101x (OK!) set LOGINADDR=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (OK! - scrambled for security reasons) So the new settings comes to this

    set CM3_CLIENT_HOME=C:\cmc
    
    set JAVA_HOME="C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_08"
    
    set CMHOMEDIR=C:\cmc\Home
    
    set CMHOME=%CMHOMEDIR%\CMhome\cs1101x
    
    set LOGINADDR=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

    * - May be different if you are using a different version of JDK/JRE. Go to your C Drive, Program Files, Java and see if you have a folder named "jre1.5.0_08", if not substitute the folder above - the digits change with every new release.
12. Tada! We're done! Save the file. Light up a joss stick or two (just kidding) and double click the file. Hopefully, after about a minute (at most), you'll get to see this screen.

Suggestions, comments are welcome. Problems? Hm, will try to help =)