[brownBananas]

Great article! I would like to add something to the source code solution:

* Create private repos for all the participants well in advanced, and ask them to commit their changes to their designated repo.

* At the time of the deadline, all pushes will be blocked, and/or the current version will be pulled down to a "demo" machine.

* Participants must provide a make file (or something similar) to automate the building on all projects.

* When their time for demo comes, they will only get to demo whatever that has been compiled on the "demo" machine.

* The "demo" machine would be hooked up to the projector, and will be the only machine used for demo-ing purposes. This also saves the time spent in hooking up their laptops to the projector.

That's all. Sounds academical, but it's a really good way of monitoring cheating (provided you have an audit team as well).

[kcon]

I think this is a good idea in theory, but AngelHack Boston Spring 2012 tried this and it didn't work very well logistically since many participants were not familiar with the chosen version control software (git).

Also I'm not sure it would cover all the bases for more complex hacks that involve hardware or more unique setups/dependencies.

Ultimately, I wish a solution could be found that doesn't work to limit the types of hacks, since that freedom is one of my favorite parts of hackathons.