GitHub Classroom template repo branches are entirely different commit histories

[robwhess]

Hi everyone,

I created a GitHub Classroom assignment from an original template repository that contained two branches: main and complete-starter-code, the latter of which was a branch off of main. The purpose of complete-starter-code was to withhold some starter code from students until a few days after the assignment had been released. I figured it would be easy to just create a PR from that branch into main on the starter code template repo that GitHub Classroom automatically generates. However, when I went to do that today, GitHub won't allow me to create a PR because "main and complete-starter-code are entirely different commit histories." Apparently when GitHub Classroom made a copy of my original template repository, it severed the commit history connection between those two branches.

Is this something that can be fixed? I've found it very challenging to update an assignment after it's been released to students. I thought queuing up planned updates into a branch that could be PR'ed back into main would make things easy, but that turned out not to be the case.

Honestly, I wish GitHub Classroom would go back to the old architecture where an intermediate template repo wasn't generated from my original template repo. It was very easy to manage assignments under that architecture. I still don't understand the benefit of adding the intermediate template repo. Couldn't student repo forks just be made directly from my original template repo without creating the intermediate template?