GitHub Classroom: Creating Assignment Repositories with Forks Beta Update

[RyanHecht]

Hi everyone,

Thank you to all the teachers who opted in to the Public Beta for creating student repositories with forks! Your feedback has been invaluable as we decide on our path forwards.

In our feedback survey, you told us how useful being able to update student assignments is to your workflows.

However, you also told us your frustrations with setting up your assignments in light of some of the important changes we shared in our beta announcement, particularly:

• Manually needing to turn on forking private repositories for your organization is an annoying additional setup step
• Assignment visibility being tied to the visibility of the starter code restricts flexibility in how you store your starter code
• Giving students access to the upstream starter code in order for them to "Sync changes" makes it too easy for them to accidentally PR their changes upstream, exposing their work to other students
• Directly forking student repositories from the starter code means the starter code repository's commits are no longer automatically squashed, potentially exposing answers to the assignment through the commit history

We have planned changes to address these (and more) concerns brought to our attention during the Beta. You might see these changes as they're implemented if you're opted in to the Beta:

• Classroom will require that your provided starter code is a template repository. When you create your assignment, Classroom will create a new repository from the template with the visibility you select, and use THAT as the base from which student repositories will be forked. This will reinstate your ability to choose assignment visibility when you create a new assignment.
• Classroom will not give students "read" permissions to the upstream starter code repository; instead, teachers will have a button on the assignment dashboard in Classroom that will check for changes and open Pull Requests in all student repositories. Students can then accept the changes from their own repositories. This prevents any possibility of students opening pull requests upstream where their work is revealed to other students
• Classroom will inform you if forking private repositories is turned off for your organization when you select "Private" visibility for your assignment. If you choose to continue, Classroom will automatically change this setting in your classroom's GitHub organization
• Classroom will give you the choice to copy all branches to student assignment repositories, or just the default branch

These changes will start rolling out to current Beta participants in the coming weeks. We anticipate generally rolling out these changes (and moving everybody to the new assignment repository creation strategy) on July 1, 2024.

Thanks again for all your feedback! I'm heading out of office tomorrow, but will be back on the 19th to answer any questions you all have!

[HashmalTech]

no

[ruansimo]

ok

[Kangoma5]

Thank you for swift action to remedy the difficulties faced

[JoeSaf]

okay

[Danny-1103]

okay

[ST10448181]

ok

[magitz]

My classroom, which is opted into the beta, is having an issue where workflow actions that are part of the template are not showing up in the student repos as runnable. If they edit the .github/workflows/___.yml file, even just adding a space, the workflow shows up in the list of runnable actions.

[nick-bennett]

We're having the same problem; not looking forward to the prospect of this still happening for my students' next practical exam.

[euangeleo]

A +1 to this problem. Our template repositories use GitHub Actions for autograding, not the GitHub Classroom tests. Actions seem not to be enabled on the new forked repositories by default. It is not an improved system if we then need to manually go into each student's repository to enable Actions again, so that they can run the tests.

[euangeleo]

FWIW, this now seems to be fixed for my currently active class. New repositories that students create using the GitHub Classroom link for this assignment are now being created with the Actions enabled, and tests being run without me needing to manually do anything. Thanks, whoever was responsible for that fix!

[infoyouth]

Question??
In my new class room i am trying to select a template repo of my own public repo, but it says.
Errors updating assignment. Starter code repository must have at least one commit. Select a repository with commits or create the assignment without starter code.

I checked visibility settings/commits all look good. but still facing that error

[onokajames96]

why is it that after forking the repository i cant stiil push is there i way the accees can be chnaged in that students can easily submit or commit their

[ctnelson1997]

Thank you!

[w0244079]

This is all great...but given that we're back to template repositories to a certain degree, would it be at all possible to provide the ability to have starter code from another private organization? This was removed a number of years ago so now my workflow is this....

Maintain a gold copy of my assignment in a non-classroom organization
Fork the gold copy to any classroom organization that might need it so that the it is available to the classroom as starter code.
Create the assignment from the starter code which now creates a copy of my fork in the same repository due to the template requirement.
I essentially have two repos of the same assignment in the classroom organization.

Could it be possible to be able to use starter code from another private organization that I also own like before so that at least I only have one repository in the classroom repo instead of two?

Thanks,
Michael

[pranavpatel08]

Thank you Michael!
seems like this is the only way for it to pick up the starter repo properly.
However, I am still facing some issue with the autograding. Got any loopholes around that?

[fuhrmanator]

I second @w0244079's request. I don't like any "gold copy" to be in the same org where TAs are owners (TAs are students). I'm not sure this requirement was considered in the current solution.

Otherwise, if there was a way to prevent TAs from having all the permissions (e.g., to delete repos) in the classroom organization, it could mitigate the risk.

[ViktoriiaBukhanets]

Hello dear community!
I have the following issue: when I try to create a new assignment based on repository, this repository has to be a template. But even when I am changing it to template, the error while creating the assignment still preserved. "Errors updating assignment. Starter code repo could not be copied to your organization ". Sometimes I also get "Errors updating assignment. Starter code repository must have at least one commit. Select a repository with commits or create the assignment without starter code". For my colleagues in the organization it does not seem to be a problem even if repository is not a template. Could someone give advises which settings I should check or what could be the issue.

Thanks,
Viktoriia

[nick-bennett]

In my opinion, this is a clumsy step in the wrong direction.

I have a curriculum org, with assignments and solutions in private template repos; I then create an org for each cohort of students I teach. When I create a student assignment, I first create a new repo (from one of the templates in the curriculum org) in the student-cohort-specific org, make the new repo a template, and then use that as the starter repo for the assignment.

I opted in to the new assignment system (with forked student repos) last month; as of one week ago, all of the above was still working fine. But yesterday when I did this, another repo was then unnecessarily created in the student cohort org (as described above in the update post), with a crazy long name (created from the concatenation of a slugified form of the descriptive name of the student cohort org, the name of the repository that I specified as the source, and the name of the assignment), and that unnecessary repo is used as the started repo for the student assignments. This is all as described above—and it's ridiculous. If this is the way this will work, why not go back to what we had a couple years back, where we could select a private template repo from another org as the assignment source? The classroom bot could then create a source repo in the student cohort org from that curriculum org template, and student forks could come from that source repo; at least that would eliminate the duplicated repos in the student cohort org.

Is there utility in having student assignment repos be created automatically as forks of the source org? Of course. However, there are many cases where that is overkill, and creating a student repo from a template (but not as a fork) is entirely sufficient; in working around some of the obvious potential issues with making the student repos forks of the source org, this latest update seems to be a kludgy acknowledgment of this, while complicating the situation for all GitHub Classroom assignment creators.

[victorbush]

another repo was then unnecessarily created in the student cohort org

I agree with the sentiment here. I would prefer to have the option to use a repository already in the classroom org as the starter code repository instead of having a copy of it created.

[nimonian]

I completely agree. Creating a new "base repo" for each cohort is wrong. When we want to maintain the repo (e.g. fix bugs in tests) we then need to go a fix it in every starter repo that has ever been created. This is bonkers. I want to be able to have one repo (not a template) and fork all my assignments from that.

[beak85]

Agree!

[pmcstjean]

+1 on this, the "copy" is useless for my workflow. I am disappointed that we cannot continue to opt-out of this feature, or have the ability so that the students fork directly from the template

[DavidMutchler]

Help! I have read the updated instructions. I have been using the new system since June 1. Everything worked for me a few days ago (after the change to the system making a COPY of my template to use as the starter code from which to fork). When I went to create a new assignment Friday, it failed with the message "Starter code repo could not be copied to your organization". That behavior continues today.

As a temporary workaround, I reverted my classroom to the old system. (I then had to change all my starter repos previously created to be templates, for the sake of students who are behind.) But if this problem is not fixed before the final rollout, it will be a disaster for me. *** I STRONGLY RECOMMEND DELAYING the July 1 rollout until adequate testing of the system has been done. ***

Edit June 29: The new system seems to be working for me now. As others have noted:

1. Be sure that your own starter code is a template.
2. The new system makes a copy of that starter code and creates forks from that copy. The copy is oddly-named but the names for projects that students see are fine (and what you would expect).
3. When you are creating a New Assignment, watch carefully when given the option for the forks to be PRIVATE or PUBLIC (there are radio button options for these). Choose PRIVATE if you do not want students to be able to see each other's code. The default for the radio buttons MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT be PRIVATE (it varies for me).

[PalominoVidalCarlos]

I have the same problem, there is some solution?

[RyanHecht]

Hi folks! These issues should be fixed now with our GA release. Let me know if you're still encountering it!

[DavidMutchler]

Thanks for your work! Things are working OK, but I got caught by the following limitation:

The problem is that: (1) Github repository names are limited in length (to 100 characters, I think). (2) The new system creates a new repository named by appending the CLASSROOM name and the STUDENT-REPO-PREFIX-NAME and the STARTER-REPO name. Together, these sometimes exceeded the length limit and sometimes did not, hence my struggles above.

No problem for me now, but this seems likely to bite others.

[ffespechen]

ok

[john-doe-1-1-2001]

Is it true that this method with forks will be around forever? Or does it make sense to rely on the ability to use the old version of generating repositories?

[RyanHecht]

Hi @john-doe-1-1-2001,

The new method with forks has replaced the old method, and it's now here to stay!

[rressler]

Ryan,
Thanks for the responses. It would be very helpful to have a post/document that describes the final expected workflow as different pieces are in different documents and hte changes are not always clear. I have been reviewing the documentation and experimenting with an assignment and I am running into issues with editing the starter code repo and expecting it to be able to get to students (the whole point of the forking capability). I am interested in how that workflow is really expected to work.

Making changes to assignment starter code states (my formatting):

If you need to update the starter code for your assignment after students have already accepted it, you can do so by modifying the original repository. Since student assignments are based on forks of this repository, you can make changes to the starter code and then create pull requests for students to merge these updates into their assignments.

The language confused me as I thought "original repository" meant the starter repository. However, what it seems to really mean is the Copy of the starter code repository. I do not see a link between the starter code repo and the Copy of it (with the longer name) where the forks come from. I was hoping to push a change to my starter code repo (in an other organization) and then use a pull request to the Fork of it in the Class Room organization so that would generate the ability for students to do a pull request. However that will not work with the student forks coming from the Copy of the starter repo.

If I edit the Copy of the starter code repo, a student can see in their repo that they are behind by a commit. They can create their own pull requests which works fine (if there are no merge conflicts). Why would I need to create one?

The challenge with editing the copy of the repository is that edits directly in the file on GItHub are not captured in my "baseline" starter repo files. I could make just make a few minor corrections in both places. If I make to many edits to a file that students might be editing, that will generate merge conflicts.

What seems more practical is editing the starter repo and making wholesale changes at the file level. Is that the expectation?

I can upload new files and student can then see those. They could make the pull request and get the new files. They would manually update any changes in their files based on the new files.

Sorry for the long post as I was not part of the Beta so I probably missed the discussions about the work flow.
I appreciate your efforts to help us understand

[RyanHecht]

The language confused me as I thought "original repository" meant the starter repository. However, what it seems to really mean is the Copy of the starter code repository.

You're absolutely right, "original repository" here is ambiguous -- you need to make the changes to the copy that Classroom creates of the actual "original." I will see that the documentation is updated to be clearer.

I do not see a link between the starter code repo and the Copy of it (with the longer name) where the forks come from. I was hoping to push a change to my starter code repo (in an other organization) and then use a pull request to the Fork of it in the Class Room organization so that would generate the ability for students to do a pull request.

What you can do is, in your local clone of the starter code repo, use git remote add to add the copy classroom creates as an additional remote, then push to the newly created remote. I will also see about adding information on how to do this in the documentation.

If I edit the Copy of the starter code repo, a student can see in their repo that they are behind by a commit. They can create their own pull requests which works fine (if there are no merge conflicts). Why would I need to create one?

This is a weird quirk of GitHub's UI -- the student can see that they're behind, but because we don't give them read access to the upstream repo anymore (like we did earlier in the Beta period), they can't actually open the pull requests.

If I make to many edits to a file that students might be editing, that will generate merge conflicts.

Yes, this is the risk you run, you might need to expose your students to merge conflicts and how to deal with them. However, your suggestion of:

upload new files and student can then see those. They could make the pull request and get the new files. They would manually update any changes in their files based on the new files.

Is a good workaround should you wish to avoid merge conflicts.

[djholt]

What you can do is, in your local clone of the starter code repo, use git remote add to add the copy classroom creates as an additional remote, then push to the newly created remote. I will also see about adding information on how to do this in the documentation.

@RyanHecht I'd love to read your documentation on this process. I don't see how this will work cleanly since the commit history of the copy has been squashed and is diverged, so pushing to both remotes from either one of the repos seems problematic.

[ssardina]

GH Classroom fails systematically when performing sync in the student forks:

It creates some, very few, PRs. I have 150+ student forks and I have tried many times, it does the sync updates on < 10 repos every time I hit Sync.

Anybody has faced this issue? 😭

[ron-reaser]

This change might cause me to switch from GitHub Classroom to another solution this semester.

• The old template-based model from last year was fine. Students would get merge conflicts when attempting to fetch and merge my changes from upstream because their initial squash commit differed from mine; it was a headache but avoidable with careful instructions.
• The fork-based beta from earlier this year was great. Students wouldn't get merge conflicts because their history and my upstream history had the same initial commit. It also most closely modeled real world usage without artificial classroom constraints, in my opinion.
• This new model clutters my organization with an extra repository with a bizarrely generated name which students can't view, so the "forked from" link on their own repository page links to a 404, which is bad user experience. It's meaningless for me to push changes to my original template repo, because I'm now supposed to push them to the copied repo. If I push to the original, it reverts to the old template-based model but worse. I can't easily push to the copied repo because the history diverges from my actual local repo due to the squash commit. And pull requests have never ever been a part of my class workflow. Every option is bad for me.

I was very happy with the fork-based beta. It was the smoothest that GitHub Classroom has ever gone for me. This new model is now the most complicated and least feasible it's ever been. I don't know how I can keep using it. The only viable option is to release the full term project at the start of the semester and never push any updates to it, but that comes with academic integrity challenges, or use other stopgap measures like patches or direct edits on the copied repo through the webpage. Again, every option is bad for me.

I am also unsatisfied with having to redo my entire workflow every semester because there's some new process to learn. This is a cognitive load I don't need when prepping my course materials, nor is it good for my students.

[ron-reaser]

To follow up, I did in fact give up and won't be using GitHub Classroom or GitHub at all for my course this semester. I was unable to surmount the difficulties from this technical change.

[djholt]

I'm in the process of adapting to the late changes since the beta earlier this summer. I've found that I can manually rename the copied starter repo without breaking anything, which is good (the default naming convention for starter repos really needs to be reworked).

Now I've managed to make most critical workflows function as needed, with one urgent exception: the automatic pull request feature to update student forks does not consider non-default branches. This is a massive limitation for me. With the original forking behavior, this was not an issue. Now, it's impossible without manually creating a pull request for each student, for each branch, multiplicatively.

@RyanHecht Short of scripting via CLI, is there a workaround? I'd appreciate the advice.

[djholt]

Turns out, even GH CLI doesn't work, because it doesn't support creating a PR across repositories within the same organization. The API does work if you use the head_repo parameter, but the CLI doesn't appear to support this option.

[marcusradell]

We have a critical regression for our setup;

Commits in forks aren't accounted for in the students' contributions.

For our students, we need to make sure that we can prove how much effort they put into the course. A lot of the commits come from the classroom assignments, and we have seen a significant drop in number of commits due to the use of forks.

The work-around we have right now is to push a copy to a private repository, which is a messy solution.

Is there a way to get back the student's contributions?

[AdityaSrivastava185]

Hello everyone please help me to solve this issue i am getting when i am trying to solve the assembly assignment on github flow course but i am getting this error please help to solve this

Github classroom autograding workflow

[atexcode]

where is the error log?

[AdityaSrivastava185]

Thanks @atexcode , but I solved it already

[DavidMutchler]

GitHub Classroom is failing for me today. I used it successfully all summer. Today, it creates the student's fork successfully, but then displays an Error 500 ("something went wrong") when it should display the URL of the student's fork. Is anyone else having troubles (or for that matter, NO troubles) with GitHub Classroom today?
... david mutchler

[Injamul2k24]

ok

[ctnelson1997]

@RyanHecht I use a public starter template that creates private repositories for each student, and when they push they get an incredibly confusing message that main is behind main. I get that this is because of the underlying technical implementation, but is there a way that this can just be hidden?

[ualjjcanada]

I also need an option to hide this confusing message:

This branch is 3 commits ahead of ...

[SillyFreak]

Unfortunately I also have to chime in with problems the new workflow causes for me.

tl;dr:

• I can't change the starter repo after the fact
• like many others, I don't need a separate copy of my starter repo and think it's relatively easy to give users the option
• updating starter code of an active assignment is not so easy with the new workflow either, and it could be made easier for many people

---

First of all, I have been unable to change the starter code to come from a different repository after the fact. For example, during creation I'd choose my-org/my-template which would then become my-org/classroom-slug-my-template. When choosing "edit" on the assignment, the repository input would have this value. I can search for a different repo, but updating the assignment will not actually do anything. As far as I could figure out, there are only two ways to change the starter repo after the fact:

• manually (force) push to my-org/classroom-slug-my-template
• delete the assignment and repo, and start from scratch

As long as I'm still editing the assignment and have not even passed out the link to it, this is strictly worse than just having "Update assignment" work.

My understanding is that the relatively cumbersome process of copying the template repo is mainly done to hide history that may contain solutions from students. Personally, I am perfectly capable of ensuring that myself and would prefer the option of skipping that copying step. Creating a new repo means overhead in a few ways (e.g. deleting the assignment now requires deleting the repo separately, I may need to clone the new repo/add a remote to some repo I have, etc.) and this overhead scales with the number of assignments. I don't want that unless I benefit from it.

I think the following would work well:

• the starter repo that you select is really the repo that students fork
• add a button "Make a copy of this repo for the starter code" to the assignment editing screen
  • explain that for this to work, the repo needs to be a template
  • allow modifying the name of the repo
  • when clicked, the template is copied and the selection is replaced
  • this means that the starter repo is still exactly what the selection shows

This provides the options people here want without removing the benefits for people that may have "messy" histories.

Regarding the ability to update the starter code after students have started the assignment: I haven't used that yet, but I feel this is greatly diminished by the fact that the starter repo is not connected to the repo where I actually develop the assignment (some comments here seem to say that). What I described above won't fix the situation for people that use the "Make a copy" button, but at least it will work for those that don't use the button.

[nimonian]

@pmcstjean

Things are very broken right now

[nimonian]

@SillyFreak

the starter repo that you select is really the repo that students fork
add a button "Make a copy of this repo for the starter code" to the assignment editing screen

That's how it used to work in the good old days before they messed it up with these "improvements"

[acbart]

I agree with this. Having a second repository get created is cumbersome, and requires a more complicated workflow. If at least it added my original repository as an upstream fork, I could sync from the github website. Now I'm going to have to figure out the proper way to keep those two repos in sync, using the command line...

[djholt]

I've got to say, complete silence from any GitHub PM on these issues and concerns is even more concerning than the awkward state things seem to be left in. This smells of abandonware or poor organizational management and transparency, at best. I'm left worried. @RyanHecht

[DavidMutchler]

This board is not monitored well, as you say. You might try emailing directly to GitHub support. I did so through our organization representative to GitHub and got back a response within a day.

[cfcurtis]

Edit: the button eventually showed up after a few hours. I'll leave this here in case others run into the same issue.

Is anyone else having trouble getting the "Sync assignments" button to appear, or is there a way to trigger it manually (through the CLI or otherwise)?

I just pushed an update to my template repo and can't open PRs automatically because the sync button is missing:

If I go to an individual student's repo I can create a PR manually, but that's painful.

[otredu]

I'm having this same issue today. The "Sync assignments" button is no longer where it used to be...

[ctnelson1997]

All of a sudden my students are encountering a "Repository Access Issue", anyone else?

[ctnelson1997]

@RyanHecht It would appear that students accepting the assignment are no longer getting direct access to their private repository. This was not the same behavior last week, and I haven't seen any release notes detailing this change.

[ctnelson1997]

It is preventing students from beginning their work.

[acbart]

Yikes, I'm getting reports of this too. Major problem! I hope they have a solution soon.

[DavidMutchler]

I saw similar behavior yesterday. My workaround was to add the student manually as an owner of their repository. The behavior does NOT appear to be happening today, fwiw. So perhaps the problem has gone away on its own (which has been the case for other problems recently as well).

[acbart]

Yep, manually adding the students worked. Painful, since we had a few dozen students affected. But if it was a one-off, then it's not the end of the world.

In case anyone wants explicit instructions, feel free to steal what I've written here:

1. Go to the assignment in Github classroom
2. For any student who has not Submitted (or a specific student), click on the link to their Repository (on the right hand side)
3. Go to Settings (right-most side of header tabs)
4. Click "Collaborators and teams" on the left
5. If things are working correctly, the student should be listed under "Direct access". If they are not, then click "Add people"
6. Type the user's github ID. This will be part of the repository name (e.g., hw3-classes-objects-acbart would be acbart)
7. Click Add to repository
8. Choose Write from the roles and then submit
9. The user should now have access

[beak85]

You can just add them with write permissions as a collaborator. That is what the system gives them when it is working properly. *From:* David Mutchler ***@***.***> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 18, 2024 10:10 AM *To:* community/community ***@***.***> *Cc:* Matt Geiger ***@***.***>; Comment < ***@***.***> *Subject:* Re: [community/community] GitHub Classroom: Creating Assignment Repositories with Forks Beta Update (Discussion #127455) I saw similar behavior yesterday. My workaround was to add the student manually as an owner of their repository. The behavior does NOT appear to be happening today, fwiw. So perhaps the problem has gone away on its own (which has been the case for other problems recently as well). — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#127455 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AEBZEBFFAU4VCDF45PFLHCLZXGCU5AVCNFSM6AAAAABI3GRGAKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTANRYGIZTIOI> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: < ***@***.***>

[beak85]

Ouch! I have quite a few too, but it only happened to two of mine this time. It seems sporadic. When it happened a few weeks ago it was a few more, but certainly not all of them. *From:* Cole Nelson ***@***.***> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 18, 2024 10:30 AM *To:* community/community ***@***.***> *Cc:* Matt Geiger ***@***.***>; Comment < ***@***.***> *Subject:* Re: [community/community] GitHub Classroom: Creating Assignment Repositories with Forks Beta Update (Discussion #127455) I have 400 students (: — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#127455 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AEBZEBC2IEGDGKO3BE2SE4DZXGE7RAVCNFSM6AAAAABI3GRGAKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTANRYGI3DGMY> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: < ***@***.***>