Participants who intialise their new GitHub repo with a README get stuck when they come to push

[36degrees]

This issue was observed whilst facilitating Prototype Kit training in Manchester on 20 February 2020.

When creating the repo on GitHub, one of the users chose to intialise the repository with a README.

This caused them issues when they came to push, as they had two different histories that could not be reconciled. This can be hard to resolve – we ended up deleting the repository on GitHub and recreating it.

[36degrees]

The GitHub UI does say to 'skip this step if you’re importing an existing repository', but I don't think it'll be clear to the user that this is what they are doing.

Importantly, the task does already say:

To avoid errors, do not initialise the new repository with a README, license or gitignore files. You can add these files after your project has been pushed to GitHub.

• Is there any way we can make this clearer?
• If not, should we add guidance at the point they come to push for the first time to help resolve it?

There might not be any action to take here, but keen to record this in case it comes up again.