Students cannot accept assignments: the visbility [sic] of the starter code is out of sync with the classroom.

[VictorNorman]

Hi everyone,

I decided to create my Fall Classroom today for my CS112 course. I created a new org, and then did Reuse Assignment on an old copy of the course. I imported all my assignments. Now, I'm trying to accept an assignment (as if I were a student).

It says it is creating the new assignment for me, please refresh, etc... then I get this error every time:

There was an error accepting the assignment. GitHub repository could not be created. The visbility of the starter code is out of sync with classroom. Your instructor may need to re-create the assignment or change the visibililty of the starter code repository.. If this problem persists, please have the Classroom admin contact support.
repository

You accepted the assignment, Lab0 but something went wrong. We have not received any updates for this assignment. You may want to reaccept the assignment.

I'm the instructor and I don't know how to fix this... What does "change the visibililty [sic]" mean?

My repo (https://github.com/24fa-cs112-org/cs112-lab0-assignment) was a Private Template. Now I've changed it to a Public Template. That does not seem to have helped.

[JessRudder]

Hi @VictorNorman. I'm sorry the copy feature is not working as expected. If I understand correctly, you got the error message saying the visibility was out of sync and then you changed the visibility of the starter code repo to public, is that correct?

If that's the case, the first step of me helping to debug is going to seem a bit silly as I'd like for you to change the visibility of the starter code repo back to private. The reason for this is that the visibility on the assignment is set to private and that needs to match the starter code. I understand that's what you had before that wasn't working, but, I need to get it back into the "right" state so we can continue debugging what's off.

To make sure you're looking at the right starter code repository, please view the assignment in Classroom. Under the assignment title should be a line that says something like "Starter code from org-name/repo-name". The org/repo name should be a link that will take you to the proper repository in GitHub.

Once the starter code repo is set to private visibility again, please try to accept it again (that will give me an updated error to look into) and then let me know in this thread.

[SimonSchillberg]

Exactly same Problem here.
The Repository is marked as Template Repository with visibility set to private.

Changing visibility for repository from Private to Public has no effect. Error message does not change.

Option to change visibility of Classroom/Assignment does not exist (as far as i checked)

Changing visibility of the repository back from Public to Private results in same error message when trying to accept the assignment:

There was an error accepting the assignment. GitHub repository could not be created. The visbility of the starter code is out of sync with classroom. Your instructor may need to re-create the assignment or change the visibililty of the starter code repository.. If this problem persists, please have the Classroom admin contact support.

[VictorNorman]

OK. I've changed the starter repo back to a private template.

Here is the Lab0 assignment setup screen:

I just tried to re-accept the assignment and still get the same error.

[GSibinger]

The issue seems to be this:
For the new feature, where a repository is created from a template repo from which student repos are then forked, you apparently need to create new assignments. This initial - and fully squashed - repository seems to be created from the provided template repo at the moment an assignment is created, and only then.
Student repositories can only be forked from repositories with a single commit, following a recent update from probably last week.

In my team we noticed that behavior yesterday. We had exactly one assignment that we could still create the student repos from. The main difference this one had to all the others was that it had only exactly one commit.

So, now we squashed all the other templates to a single commit, because re-creating every single assignment simply wasn't an option. With these squashed templates we can create student repos again. They are forked directly from the template, though.

So it seems there's these two options right now:

1. re-create every single assignment, so that the initial repo is created from the template
2. squash the template repo and have the new repos be forked directly from the template repo

I am not happy with either solution, to be honest.

[JessRudder]

@VictorNorman and @SimonSchillberg we believe we have identified the issue that's preventing assignment acceptance for your assignments and hope to have a solution deployed tomorrow. I'll update here when it is out. Thank you so much for the additional information, it was very helpful for debugging.

@GSibinger you shouldn't need to squash any commits in order for a repository to work as starter code. The starter code repo does need to be set as a template repository though. If you have an example assignment where the starter code is a template repo and it's still not working for you, please let me know the name of the classroom and assignment and the team will look into it.

[GSibinger]

Hi @JessRudder, thank you for your response.

All our assignments are working now because we squashed the template repositories. While there might have been a configuration issue, we couldn't identify or fix it.

The starter code repos were all set as private templates. We verified this on July 1st when your changes were rolled out. We could create student repos, but we did not notice at the time that they were forked directly from the template. On Monday, a student reported that they could no longer take assignments, encountering the same error @VictorNorman posted.

After analyzing the classrooms and repos, we re-created one assignment and noticed that the starter code repo was created correctly from our template and attached to the assignment. This did not happen for existing assignments.

You are welcome to review one of our classrooms here. The template repository now has 2 branches: the main branch is the squashed one, and we renamed the original main to "develop".

Thank you for looking into this.

[twennekers]

I am having the same problem.
Time is running for this referral assignment and the students are not happy.

[twennekers]

Problem persists
Reset visibility to private
Created a new student github account
The repository cannot be created for this student.
Reset visibility to public again.
Old error reappeared - repository out of sync

When I set up the assignment I actually created a repository using the link myself under the same account as the template repository was created. This worked and the repository copy is fine.

I believe in the meantime some procedures to setup assignments on Github / Classroom have changed. Perhaps that messed something up?

[JessRudder]

@VictorNorman, @SimonSchillberg, @twennekers and @GSibinger we have deployed a fix that should resolve the "visibility mismatch" issue you were seeing with assignment acceptance. If the issue persists (or you are seeing other issues with assignment acceptance), please let us know (including the name of the classroom and assignment, where possible to make troubleshooting easier).

[DrErickson]

I'm also getting this error for one of my students

Classroom: https://classroom.github.com/classrooms/77716313-csueb-cs301-01-fall-2024
Assignment: https://classroom.github.com/a/CNS_YV4w

[allenjas]

Yep - DrErikson's screenshot is exactly what some of my students see:

[DrErickson]

I figured out what was happening. Check the GitHub Team plan under "Billing and Plans" on your organization:

https://github.com/settings/billing/summary

When I was re-verifying my educator status, GitHub revoked my benefits. As a result, I had over 520 seats in my team and could not add any more students (it counts ALL students who ever checked out an assignment). I put my plan down to the "Free" tier, and it at least let my students check out the assignments.

A more descriptive error message may be beneficial in this case.

I'm hoping my benefits get re-instated again soon.

[katyhuff]

I am having the same issue today.

Classroom: https://classroom.github.com/classrooms/35508865-npre560-2024
Assignment: https://classroom.github.com/classrooms/35508865-npre560-2024/assignments/560-cp1
Assignment Invite Link: https://classroom.github.com/a/x_TQOgcw

[katyhuff]

As an update, I should note that my repo wasn't previously a template, so I changed it to a template.
That didn't work, so I've just tried creating a brand new assignment that points to that same public template repo as the starter code.
This second action seems to have worked, so I'm now going to replace all of the assignments in this course by repeating that action.

[twennekers]

Hi Thanks for dealing with this so quickly. Unfortunately, the issue has not been resolved for me. I tried yesterday and today to setup a student repository by reaccepting the assignment on a "student" test account. The system tries to set the repository up correctly and asks to wait. However, when I reload, the same out of sync error occurs. There is a link on the error page to "update" the assignment which leads to a 404 error, page not found. When I created the assignment a month or so ago I went through the creation process which worked at that time. The repository is here: https://github.com/Plymouth-University/comp1000-referral-2023-24-twennekers Regards Thomas From: Jess Rudder ***@***.***> Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2024 7:33 PM To: community/community ***@***.***> Cc: Thomas Wennekers ***@***.***>; Mention ***@***.***> Subject: Re: [community/community] Students cannot accept assignments: the visbility [sic] of the starter code is out of sync with the classroom. (Discussion #131139) @VictorNorman<https://github.com/VictorNorman>, @SimonSchillberg<https://github.com/SimonSchillberg>, @twennekers<https://github.com/twennekers> and @GSibinger<https://github.com/GSibinger> we have deployed a fix that should resolve the "visibility mismatch" issue you were seeing with assignment acceptance. If the issue persists (or you are seeing other issues with assignment acceptance), please let us know (including the name of the classroom and assignment, where possible to make troubleshooting easier). - Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#131139 (comment)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ARPH3RJMAMWODDLSQUNJYNTZL3FV7AVCNFSM6AAAAABKNJXGLGVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTAMBSGQZDMNI>. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

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[alanarnholt]

I am having the same issue as reported by VictorNorman.

There was an error accepting the assignment. GitHub repository could not be created. The visibility of the starter code is out of sync with Classroom. Your instructor may need to re-create the assignment or change the visibility of the starter code repository.. Try and (update) the assignment. If this problem persists, please have the Classroom admin contact support.

I recreated the assignment as suggested in the message and the error persisted. Next I changed the starter repo locations....also to fail.

Suggestions most appreciated.

@alanarnholt

[jahagirdar]

I too am facing this issue for the assignment at https://classroom.github.com/a/D3N4nEj7
I have been using this repo for assignments for a few years now and have 464 repos in this org. Is this a problem?