local_repo_anonymize: Anonymize a local repo or grading project

In ghclass: Tools for Managing Classes on GitHub

Anonymize a local repo or grading project

Description

Makes a best-effort pass over a local git repository, a directory of repositories, or a grading project created by org_grade_assignment() and removes student personally identifying information (PII). Two things happen:

• File contents - every text file is scanned and any roster-derived value (names, NetIDs, emails, GitHub usernames, ...) is replaced with a stable per-student token (e.g. student_07).

• Git history - each repository's .git directory is either deleted outright (the default) or kept untouched.

Usage

local_repo_anonymize(
  path,
  roster,
  cols = tidyselect::any_of(c("name", "first", "last", "email", "netid", "github")),
  output = NULL,
  types = c(".md", ".qmd", ".[Rr]md", ".txt", ".csv", ".tsv", ".html?", ".[Rr]", ".py",
    ".ipynb", ".json", ".ya?ml", ".tex", ".bib", ".toml", ".[Rr]proj"),
  git_history = c("delete", "keep"),
  prompt = interactive()
)

Arguments

path	Character. Path to a git repository, a directory of repositories, or a grading project folder (one containing a ⁠repos/⁠ subdirectory of cloned repositories, e.g. as produced by org_grade_assignment()).
roster	Either a path to a roster CSV file or a data frame. Each row is treated as one student.
cols	<tidy-select> Roster columns whose values should be stripped from the contents. Defaults to the name, first, last, email, netid, and github columns when present.
output	Character. Directory to write the anonymized copy to. Defaults to ⁠<path>_anon⁠. Set output = path to modify the folder in place (gated by a confirmation prompt when prompt = TRUE).
types	Character. Regular expressions matched against the end of each file name to decide which files are treated as text and scanned. Defaults to common text formats found in student work (markdown, R / Python source, notebooks, html, csv, yaml, ...).
git_history	Character. How each repository's git history is handled. Either "delete" (default, remove the .git directory entirely) or "keep" (leave it untouched, retaining the un-anonymized history).
prompt	Logical. Prompt for confirmation before modifying a folder in place. Defaults to interactive().

Details

Git history cannot be reliably anonymized while also being preserved. Even after rewriting commit author and committer identities, the original file contents of older commits remain recoverable (⁠git show <old-sha>:README.md⁠), and real names routinely survive in commit messages and branch names. Because anyone you hand the repository to receives its full history, there are only two honest options, selected with git_history:

• "delete" (default) - remove each repository's .git directory entirely. The result is the scrubbed working tree with no recoverable history. This is the safe choice for sharing student work.

• "keep" - leave .git untouched. The working-tree files are still scrubbed, but the original commit history (with real names and emails) is retained, so the result is not safe to distribute.

The function works on a copy by default (⁠<path>_anon⁠), leaving the original intact, so deleting history is non-destructive to your working copy.

Only files whose names match types are scanned, so binary and other non-text files are skipped by design. Matching is best effort: word boundaries are used for names / NetIDs to avoid clobbering unrelated text, but short or common names may still over-match, and HTML-entity-encoded names are not detected. Anonymization is roster-driven, so anyone absent from the roster (e.g. a student who later dropped) will not be matched.

Value

Invisibly, a list with two tibbles: text (files scrubbed and replacements made per directory) and git (the action taken per repo).

Examples

## Not run: 
local_repo_anonymize(
  "grading/hw1",
  roster = "rosters/hw1_roster.csv"
)

# scrub text but keep history, choosing the columns explicitly
local_repo_anonymize(
  "grading/hw1",
  roster = roster_df,
  cols = c(name, netid, email),
  git_history = "keep"
)

## End(Not run)

ghclass documentation built on Aug. 31, 2026, 5:08 p.m.