ICFP Programming Contest 2018

Frequently Asked Questions

2018-07-13

  • Q: How can teams stay informed of updates during the contest?

  • A: The contest website is the authoritative source of contest information. Noteworthy updates will be added to the News section of the homepage, tweeted from @icfpcontest2018, and chatted on the #icfp-contest IRC channel on Freenode.net. In truly extraordinary circumstances, the contest organizers may e-mail teams at their registered e-mail addresses.

  • Q: How can teams contact the contest organizers during the contest?

  • A: General questions and clarifications about the contest task description may be raised as GitHub issues; please check if the question/clarification has already been raised among all (open and closed) GitHub issues and pull requests. Team specific concerns (or general questions and clarifications from those without a GitHub account) may be sent to icfpcontest2018@gmail.com. The contest organizers will also monitor tweets @icfpcontest2018 and the #icfp-contest IRC channel on Freenode.net, but with a lower priority.

  • Q: Will teams be required to submit executables during or after the contest?

  • A: No.

  • Q: Will teams be required to submit source code during or after the contest?

  • A: Yes. All teams wishing to be considered for prizes must submit source code at the end of the contest. Teams will be asked to submit the URL and SHA256 checksum of single .zip archive with their source code, a README.txt file, and any other supporting materials. Teams may use any hosting platform that is publicly accessible (a personal or institutional web server, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.). The source code should remain available for up to two weeks after the end of the contest.

  • Q: What will teams be required to submit during the contest?

  • A: The exact details of contest submissions will be announced at the start of the contest. However, as with source code, teams will be asked to submit the URL and SHA256 checksum of single .zip archive with their lightning division and full contest submissions. Teams may use any hosting platform that is publicly accessible (a personal or institutional web server, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.). Teams may submit multiple times during the contest (using either a new or the same URL, but different SHA256 checksum); early submissions may be evaluated during the contest for live standings, but only the last submissions for the lightning division and the full contest will be considered for prizes. The last submissions for the lightning division and the full contest should remain available for up to two weeks after the end of the contest. Teams may optionally encrypt their submissions with a team specific private identifier, if they are concerned about posting submissions to a publicly accessible location during the contest.

  • Q: How should teams encrypt their .zip archives?

  • A: zip --encrypt (Unix); 7-Zip Encryption method: ZipCrypto (Windows)

  • Q: How should teams compute SHA256 checksums of their .zip archives?
  • A: shasum -a 256 (Unix); 7-Zip File -> CRC -> SHA-256 (Windows); certutil -hashfile submission.zip SHA256 (Windows; info); Get-FileHash submission.zip -Algorithm SHA256 (Windows; info)