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Non-default branches are copies instead of diffs

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#87 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
go
Domain
cli

Research direction

Reproduce the assignment creation flow with a template containing main and a one-commit-ahead solution branch, comparing behavior when "Copy the default branch only" is unchecked. Trace the branch-copying entry point and verify that the resulting solution branch retains ancestry so students can view the intended diff.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

In my class, I create assignments from repository templates that have a main branch and a solution branch. The solution branch is one commit ahead of the main branch so that students can click on solution's commit to see a diff of the solution. At least, that is how it worked last year.

This year, GitHub Classroom changed such that there's a new option "Copy the default branch only". When this option is unchecked, the solution branch is copied as if it were an entirely new branch (parallel to main). As a result, the diff is lost! This makes it very difficult for students to see the parts of the code that are added/removed/changed in the solution.

(P.S. Is there another (better) approach to providing solutions to assignments?)

Dominant language
Go
Stars
126
Forks
21
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

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