Unclear situation after creating an empty branch

[Jeroen T. Vermeulen]

On staging just now, I created a productseries. Its overview page told me:

Code for this series
You haven't yet told Launchpad where your source code is for [...] series.

I picked the handy "Configure series branch" option on the page. That gives me 3 options: select an existing branch, create a new branch, or mirror a branch from elsewhere. I pick option 2: create an empty new branch. Submit.

Now I'm back on the series page, where it still says "You haven't yet told Launchpad where your source code is" etc. If I follow the "Configure series branch" link again, I can again "create" a new branch with the same name as before—there is no indication that one of the same name already exists. Yet browsing around in the Code section, I find that the branch was indeed registered.

It seems as if this is yet another case where the UI gets confused about branches existing in the database but not being pushed. This is a widespread problem. I think we need to fix this specific instance, but also talk about general improvements for this situation.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

bug 288645 argues that Launchpad should not allow registering an empty branch, but provide instructions to push. This bug can be considered a duplicate if that is the correct course.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

From jml:

> We keep seeing different problems with our UI and user interaction when a
> branch has been registered (in the database) but not created (on
> codehosting).

Yes. We should just prevent people from registering hosted branches.
It creates a heap of problems and doesn't solve any that I can see.
bug 288645

> People not familiar with distributed version control fail to
> figure out how to start a branch. Project owners set up translations
> exports to nonexistent branches.

I am familiar with DVCS and I think I'd be tripped up by this one. Why
doesn't the translations exporter create a new branch?

> "Configure a series branch" on a product
> series can appear to do nothing, with no next steps becoming obvious (bug
> 567065).

Looking at the bug, I think that's a different problem too.

> 1. For branches that have had no changes scanned yet, lots of places that
> link to them could benefit from a standardized warning icon and tooltip, or
> even a full paragraph. Maybe even all places.
>

Not quite what you describe, but see:
bug 368312
bug 320065

> 2. The branch page itself ought to draw attention to the situation and guide
> the user towards next steps.
>
> It'd be very comforting to see a more detailed notice on the branch page:
> "This branch has not been pushed to yet. Here's what you need to do.
> Here's a link to a help page explaining your options. If you've already
> pushed, please wait a few minutes for the change to be noticed."

The branch page should definitely be better in this regard. The code
team are working this week to reduce a significant part of the latency
between pushing and appearing in the web ui.

Before a link to help will help, Launchpad needs to be more honest
about the state of the branch. See bug /445424. We should
also have an ajax widget that updates when the branch is ready, rather
than the embarrassing "please refresh" thing we have now (same goes
for MP diffs).

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

There is one valid use case for creating an empty branch--so that an admin can make it private before the code is pushed.

We could explain this case in the item:
   * Create a new, empty branch in Launchpad and link to this series so that an Admin can make it private.

Since this form is for setting up the project and series, I think we expect the the project privacy to be configured *before* the development series branch is set. We could remove this option from the form and add a message that explain that private branches should be setup first.
    * Request an admin to setup branch privacy before configuring the project's focus of development branch.

I would like to make both messages dependant on a commercial license, but I think our workflow is broken. Users often configure the project before redeeming a commercial voucher.

I think I favour showing the empty branch option only when the project has a commercial license, and the option should explain that this is for setting a private branch. Can we automatically make the project visible to the project owner?

[Ursula Junque (ursinha)]

Fixed in stable r10826 <http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~launchpad-pqm/launchpad/stable/revision/10826>

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

Fixed released in launchpad-project 10.04.