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Windows Computer Lab Installs (All Users) #16

Open mryantho opened 9 years ago

mryantho commented 9 years ago

I'm looking for the best way to install the Windows version of GitHub for all users. Students don't have Admin access so it needs to be pushed via policy or installed "For All Users" by an Admin (me.)

afeld commented 9 years ago

Do they have individual user accounts on the machines? If it's a shared user, the biggest issue will be making sure GitHub for Windows is signed in as the right person. Not sure where those preferences are saved, though... you could reach out to GitHub support if you need.

mryantho commented 9 years ago

They are individual user accounts, but they don't have permissions to install.

toddwseattle commented 9 years ago

I couldn't get this to work right on the lab coumputers in my software engineering class either. Additionally, I found on windows where my students had in the previous semester used git with another repository vender, I had lots of debugging of the gitbash shell vs. the post powershell--this was super painful. What I mostly did was have people re-install from github and have all the windows users focus on the powershell

In the case of multiple users on a machine; i had to give up on lab computers; and in the case where a pair had a machine die (first assignment had pairs) have them use git id or annotate the commit message with who they were.

afeld commented 9 years ago

they don't have permissions to install

See https://github.com/education/teachers/issues/2#issuecomment-46639671.

josephrowe commented 9 years ago

We have the same bug. Here are the steps:

result: Can't access github in any way known..... no icon on dekstop for github, click the start menu and no visible github icon there. search for github and nada. no "appref-ms" shorcut. nada.

expected result: Student logs on and can access github

umasshokie commented 9 years ago

My understanding is

(1) You don't need administrative access to install the GitHub app. My students can install it on all of our lab machines

(2) You can't install it for all users, or automate installation in any way, so every time a user is on a new computer they must install GitHub for themselves.

The way I dealt with this is I had our tech admins put the install file on all computers on the desktop, and told the students to just install if they were on a computer for the first time. Worked fine all semester.

josephrowe commented 9 years ago

Mr./Ms umASShoke is correct. I forgot to mention that workaround.

Students can run the github installer even with a restricted account under windows7. That's a workaround no doubt. It does consume a lot of time. I just timed it for one student. It takes about 5 minutes for the installer to finish. Setup pulls data from "github-windows.s3.amazonaws.com"

We would like to avoid these delays and extra steps.

Students in a lab of 30 computers use different computers every day. Some days they use the same computer. Some days not. We try to create diverse mixtures of students, so that students work in different small groups from time to time. Students get sick or miss class. All these factors mean students sit at different computers often. so for Jane Doe, who uses 11 different computers in a semester we are looking at the use of about 55 minutes each year to something that might be avoided.

For now we can live with the workaround, but just putting the bug/feature out there so people can understand it.

Happy Monday from one teacher and a bunch of happy students.....

Chaddai commented 7 years ago

From my perspective as a high-school CS teacher, I agree that this is a problem.

Even the workaround won't work in my case (the download from s3.amazonaws.com fail, no idea why) and would in any case be extremely awkward given the extremely limited connection my school has (We're on something like 10 Mbps... Optical fiber run a few road from here but apparently a high school wasn't a priority to link up).

This would just not be a problem if Github Desktop (very nice UI for beginners) could be installed for all users. This seems to be a problem that should be tractable if annoying, there are no fundamental technical limitations here.

Swolebrain commented 7 years ago

I personally found that installing the git-scm client is much better. The github for windows client seems to be made for individual use and mostly for osx, with windows as an after thought.