message to update create_signatures doesn't say where to update it

[Steve Alexander]

The bzr release I'm testing gives messages ocassionally like "Please use create_signatures, not check_signatures to set signing policy."

But, it doesn't tell me where or how I need to use these things.

If this is in some config file, perhaps bzr could tell me what config file it is.

Bzr did that well for renaming branches.conf to locations.conf. As a user, I knew exactly what I was supposed to do to fix the situation, without having to grep through config files or check documentation.

[Aaron Bentley (abentley)]

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Steve Alexander wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> The bzr release I'm testing gives messages ocassionally like "Please use
> create_signatures, not check_signatures to set signing policy."
>
> But, it doesn't tell me where or how I need to use these things.

You only get that message if you have already configured
"check_signatures", so I assumed you know where you set it.

> If this is in some config file, perhaps bzr could tell me what config
> file it is.

Signature checking may be configured in any of ~/bazaar/global.conf,
~/bazaar/locations.conf, or .bzr/branch.conf. The API that determines
the config value doesn't (currently) include a human-readable
description of where the value that determined the policy came from.

Aaron
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[Steve Alexander (stevea)]

So, I found check_signatures in my ~/.bazaar/bazaar.conf

I changed it to say 'create_signatures' instead of 'check_signatures', and I get this error:

bzr: ERROR: Invalid signing policy 'require'

The line in bazaar.conf is "check_signatures=require".

I tried changing it to "create_signatures=yes" and I get an error:

bzr: ERROR: Invalid signing policy 'yes'

I'm going to set this back the way it was, as I prefer to see warnings than to be unable to work. The warning message should say what the new value of 'create_signatures' should be, based on the old value of 'check_signatures', or at least tell me where I can find out what the new value should be.

[Steve Alexander (stevea)]

I found the documentation:

  http://bazaar-vcs.org/ConfiguringBzr

[John A Meinel (jameinel)]

What if this was just documented better inside bzr.

So that you could do:

'bzr help signatures'

Which would talk about setting up signatures and at the bottom it could have a comment about how it used to be 'check_signatures=require' and is now 'create_signatures=always'?

I think we need some more help, I'm just not sure the best way to do it, without having tons of information.

[Aaron Bentley (abentley)]

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Steve Alexander wrote:
> I found the documentation:
>
> http://bazaar-vcs.org/ConfiguringBzr

This is also documented in doc/configuration.txt

Aaron
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[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

If I ever “already configured 'check_signatures'”, it was so long ago that I don't remember doing it, so I had no idea what this message meant either. Because the message said neither where nor why to update it, I didn't.

I think providing “bzr help signatures” would work only if the message about updating create_signatures said something like “Run "bzr help signatures" for more information.”

[Aaron Bentley (abentley)]

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Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> If I ever “already configured 'check_signatures'”, it was so long ago
> that I don't remember doing it, so I had no idea what this message meant
> either. Because the message said neither where nor why to update it, I
> didn't.

Like most config settings, create_signatures can be set in any of three
configuration locations.

Aaron
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[Steve Alexander (stevea)]

If Bazaar has read the create_signatures setting, then Bazaar ought to be able to tell me where it read it from.

[Aaron Bentley (abentley)]

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Aaron Bentley wrote:
> Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>> If I ever “already configured 'check_signatures'”, it was so long ago
>> that I don't remember doing it, so I had no idea what this message meant
>> either. Because the message said neither where nor why to update it, I
>> didn't.
>
> Like most config settings, create_signatures can be set in any of three
> configuration locations.

And the locations of two of those files vary by platform.

Aaron
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[Aaron Bentley (abentley)]

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Steve Alexander wrote:
> If Bazaar has read the create_signatures setting, then Bazaar ought to
> be able to tell me where it read it from.

"Ought to be able to" and "can" are two different things. The
interfaces that retrieve a config value don't provide any record of
where it came from.

If someone wants to spend time improving a warning message that only
applies to people who enabled signature creation before July 2006, they
are of course welcome to do so.

Aaron
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