This package runs a course on GitHub from R. It does not use GitHub Classroom. Each student gets a private repo in your organization, your starter files get pushed in, and the student is added as a collaborator.
Before you start
You need an organization that already exists. The GitHub API cannot
create one. Please make it once in the browser. You also need
git on your system for collecting submissions.
Your roster is a CSV with at least a column named handle
holding GitHub usernames.
handle
student1
student2
student3Token
Run setup_github_token() once. It opens the token page
with the right scopes already selected, checks the token authenticates
and carries repo and admin:org, then saves it
to ~/.Renviron.
If the token is missing a scope, it tells you which one and saves nothing.
Set the organization
Please do this for each session but replace it with your own organization’s name.
set_org("ISTA421INFO521")Assign
Put your starter files in a folder within your working directory.
Then, use assign_homework to push them to every student’s
repo. The repo for each student is named prefix-handle, so
hw1-student1 and so on.
res <- assign_homework("roster.csv", "hw1_files", prefix = "hw1")
res
table(res$status)res has one row per student with a status
of ok, exists, create_error, or
setup_error. Rows that already existed are skipped. You can
run this again without trouble.
By default students get push access. Use
permission = "admin" if you want students to manage their
own repos.
Check
Confirm every repo is there.
status <- check_homework("roster.csv", prefix = "hw1")
status[!status$exists, ]Update files
Use update_homework() you need to fix or add a starter
file after assigning, push it again. This function creates files that
are missing and overwrites files that exist.
update_homework("roster.csv", "hw1_fixes", prefix = "hw1")Note that updating overwrites whatever is at those paths within the repo. If a student already edited a file you push, your version replaces theirs in the latest commit. The old content stays in history.
Collect
There’s a function that pull everyone’s work into a local folder.
Submissions land under dest/prefix/handle. You can run it
as many times as you need.
collect_homework("roster.csv", prefix = "hw1", dest = "submissions")Notes on how it works
Note that files are pushed through the GitHub contents API, one file per call, each as its own commit. This is fine for small starter folders. For large or deeply nested projects it is slow and noisy in the history…
Collecting uses git, not the API, since it moves whole repositories.
Adding a collaborator sends an invitation. Students accept it from their GitHub email or notifications before they can push.