Granting private PPA access is unclear about expiry date effect or confirmation requirement

[Marc Tardif]

First, the interface for giving someone access to a private PPA provides the following description for the expiration date:

   The date when the subscription will expire.

However, considering the field is optional, it should also state what will happen if it is left empty.

Second, after giving access to a new user, the following informational message is presented:

  You have subscribed Marc Tardif to Private PPA for Hardware Certification.

It is not obvious that a message has been sent behind my back to the user waiting for their confirmation. Perhaps the word "subscribe" implies confirmation but this might not be obvious to everyone. So, I would suggest simply extending the original message to state something to this effect.

[Michael Nelson (michael.nelson)]

Thanks Marc. We'll update both points. Yes, the second confirmation message was not updated after we added the email notifications.

I'd suggest we also update the subscription page so that you know an email will be sent to all subscribers *before* you subscribe them.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

If you can't subscribe someone without them confirming it, that's not a subscription, it's an invitation, and the interface should use that word instead.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

This is not the case.

The person has a subscription whether they like it or not, it's not an invitation. There's no confirmation step, they just need to retrieve their token to be able to access the archive repo. I think this is a subtle difference.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

If I have been subscribed to a PPA but I have not yet retrieved the token, is there anything I can do with the PPA that I couldn't do before?

If so, maybe this should be mentioned in the e-mail message you receive, and perhaps in the introduction to the subscriptions page too.

If not, I think the word "invitation" is appropriate.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

Once the subscription is active, in effect the user now has access to the repo. The fact that we delay generating the token until they go and look for it is an implementation detail. If we were to generate the token immediately, they would still need to go and find out what it is so they can amend their sources.list. However, we delay the generation so that it can be ascertained if someone went and retrieved their token.

So, my point is that I don't want to base user feedback on implementation details. As far as I am concerned, once the PPA owner gives you a subscription, you can now access the repo.

That said, I think the wording in the UI can be a lot clearer.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I'm sorry for leading this bug report off on a tangent. I misunderstood the meaning of the term "subscription", but that's now covered by bug 386355.

[Diogo Matsubara (matsubara)]

Fixed in devel r8717.