Ensure C++ track is ready for v2 launch

[kytrinyx]

There are a number of things we're going to want to check before the v2 site goes live. There are notes below that flesh out all the checklist items.

• The track has a page on the v2 site: https://v2.exercism.io/tracks/cpp
• The track page has a short description under the name (not starting with TODO)
• The "About" section is a friendly, colloquial, compelling introduction
• The "About" section follows the formatting guidelines
• The code example gives a good taste of the language and fits within the boundaries of the background image
• There are exercises marked as core
• Exercises have rough estimates of difficulty
• Exercises have topics associated with them
• The first exercise is auto_approve: true

Track landing page

The v2 site has a landing page for each track, which should make people want to join it. If the track page is missing, ping @kytrinyx to get it added.

Blurb

If the header of the page starts with TODO, then submit a pull request to https://github.com/exercism/cpp/blob/master/config.json with a blurb key. Remember to get configlet and run configlet fmt . from the root of the track before submitting.

About section

If the "About" section feels a bit dry, then submit a pull request to https://github.com/exercism/cpp/blob/master/docs/ABOUT.md with suggested tweaks.

Formatting guidelines

In order to work well with the design of the new site, we're restricting the formatting of the ABOUT.md. It can use:

• Bold
• Italics
• Links
• Bullet lists
• Number lists

Additionally:

• Each sentence should be on its own line
• Paragraphs should be separated by an empty line
• Explicit <br/> can be used to split a paragraph into lines without spacing between them, however this is discouraged.

Code example

If the code example is too short or too wide or too long or too uninteresting, submit a pull request to https://github.com/exercism/ocaml/blob/master/docs/SNIPPET.txt with a suggested replacement.

Exercise metadata

Where the v1 site has a long, linear list of exercises, the v2 site has organized exercises into a small set of required exercises ("core").

If you update the track config, remember to get configlet and run configlet fmt . from the root of the track before submitting.

Topic and difficulty

Core exercises unlock optional additional exercises, which can be filtered by topic an difficulty, however that will only work if we add topics and difficulties to the exercises in the track config, which is in https://github.com/exercism/cpp/blob/master/config.json

Auto-approval

We've currently made any hello-world exercises auto-approved in the backend of v2. This means that you don't need mentor approval in order to move forward when you've completed that exercise.

Not all tracks have a hello-world, and some tracks might want to auto approve other (or additional) exercises.

Track mentors

There are no bullet points for this one :)

As we move towards the launch of the new version of Exercism we are going to be ramping up on actively recruiting people to help provide feedback. Our goal is to get to 100%: everyone who submits a solution and wants feedback should get feedback. Good feedback.

If you're interested in helping mentor the track, check out http://mentoring.exercism.io/

When all of the boxes are ticked off, please close the issue.

Tracking progress in exercism/meta#104

[jackhughesweb]

Things that can already be checked off:

The track has a page on the v2 site: https://v2.exercism.io/tracks/cpp
The "About" section is a friendly, colloquial, compelling introduction
The "About" section follows the formatting guidelines
Exercises have rough estimates of difficulty
Exercises have topics associated with them

I've submitted a pull request for the blurb #184.

The first exercise currently does not have "auto_approve" set, but is named "hello-world" - this may need to be changed. Also, there are no exercises set as core yet.

The code snippet fits within the boundaries of the box, but I was wondering whether there is a better example to show more of the language/features? (@exercism/cpp-contributors)

[LegalizeAdulthood]

v2 launch would be a good time to switch our unit testing framework from Boost.Test to Catch. There is already some work in a branch on this but it needs to be reviewed and resynced onto the current head. One of the main pain points in the C++ track has been the necessity for Boost and this would be a great time to switch in order to eliminate this pain. What is the current schedule for v2 launch?

[LegalizeAdulthood]

Where is the https://v2.exercism.io/tracks/cpp page? It needs some minor updating (current standard is C++17).

[jackhughesweb]

The part of the page below the short blurb is in docs/ABOUT.md

[jackhughesweb]

I think this issue can be closed now (@LegalizeAdulthood)