Locating project releases and their downloads is not obvious

[William Grant]

If I'm a user, I don't want the code that is found under the Code tab. I want to grab it from a release.

Code was named better back when it was called Branches. It is currently confusing.

ADDENDUM
The problem is that the project's releases and their downloadable tarballs are not obvious. The navigation and presentation of project information needs fixing.

[Diogo Matsubara (matsubara)]

There's a link "There are download files available for <project-name>" in the Code tab for a project (e.g. https://code.edge.launchpad.net/bzr)

Doesn't that cover your use case?

[Tim Penhey (thumper)]

If you are a user, surely you don't want code at all, you want packages or install files.

If you want code then it makes sense to get it from the VCS.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

(This may be a dupe.)

I think there is a substantial issue here.

It is common for people coming to a project's home page to want to download it, either in a prebuilt package or as a simple source code tarball. For unix projects it is pretty common to want or expect to get source rather than a binary package.

This might be a good thing to try some user testing on: get some users starting from a project's homepage or the launchpad top page to get an installable copy of a project.

"Code" is a fairly obivious link to click to get there. Code does not necessarily mean source.

On the other hand the third-level (!) tab bar on the project homepage does now have a "Downloads" tab, and if people click that they may find what they want.

It might be good if 'announcements' and 'downloads' were in the main tab bar. I bet both of them are more interesting to most visitors than blueprints.

[Jonathan Lange (jml)]

I don't think "Code" implies downloads, so I would like to mark this as Invalid. Code can imply downloads, but it also implies branches and the like.

I *do* think that more end-users of upstream projects care about released source tarballs than they do about trunk, branches, code reviews and the like. Martin's comments here are perhaps worth raising on launchpad-users or filing as a separate bug.

[Jonathan Lange (jml)]

Related to bug 256545. Rename "Code" to "Branches" would fix both bugs, but they aren't necessarily dupes.

[Jonathan Lange (jml)]

I don't know what to do about this bug. I don't like the idea of renaming "Code" to "Branches". Perhaps we should add a download link to the branch listing page.

Curtis, what do you reckon? Downloads are a registry thing so I'm keen to hear your thoughts.

[Martin Albisetti (beuno)]

So, my feeling is that the solution should come from making the "download release" and "get trunk" links prominent on the project's home page. This is already a big priority in registry, and, incidentally, I'm sprinting with those nice people right now

I think "code" is a much more universal term than "branches", so I think it's a bad idea to change it.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

I agree with martin that it should be obvious download the release's tarball. I'm moving this bug to the registry. I think we can incorporate this issue into the work we are doing to improve project planning.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

Fixed released in launchpad-project 2.2.8.