The ICPC Balloon Utility (BU) is a tool for keeping track of balloons earned by contest teams for successful run submissions. It receives submission information from one of several input sources, displays information about each submission (such as the problem, team, run ID, school, submission time, etc.) and optionally automatically prints “balloon notification” messages to assist runners in delivering balloons. It also provides runners with an interactive mechanism for tracking delivered balloons, and is even capable of printing maps showing runners where to go find the appropriate balloon and where on the contest floor the receiving team is located (although instructions for configuring it to do that are beyond the scope of this introductory guide).
Download
The latest stable Balloon Utility version is 2.5.1082, released on 30 May 2024 at 12:35:39 from commit 78af2ada.
Download stable release v2.5.1082
The latest prerelease is v2.6.1170, built on 17 December 2024 at 13:10:37 from commit cfa2e214.
Download prerelease build v2.6.1170
Documentation
The Balloon Utility documentation can also be downloaded.