Automate, Alter & Extend Git Repository Workflow with RepoBee

Abstract

To make effective use of version control systems like Git in teaching, teachers require tool support to manage student repositories. RepoBee (https://repobee.org) is a command line tool that assists teachers in creating repositories for students, batch cloning of student repositories, facilitating industry-inspired peer review, and much more. A powerful plugin system makes RepoBee flexible, allowing it to execute workflow-specific tasks such as running JUnit test cases on cloned student repositories, managing repositories created by GitHub Classroom, and extracting grades from grading issues on issue trackers. Also by way of the plugin system, RepoBee uniquely supports both the GitHub and GitLab platforms. In this demo, we shall demonstrate how teachers can apply RepoBee to manage student repositories. We shall first show the core features of student repository creation and cloning, and then how workflows can be customized with the plugin system. To cultivate interaction, participants will be able to suggest desirable features, which we then attempt to start developing plugins for. Finally, we shall conclude with an open discussion on tool support for version control in education and attempt to identify future directions.