Branch exists in web ui but can't be accessed via bzr

[Martin Owens]

Trying to do either bzr branch or bzr checkout on an empty launchpad repository:

bzr branch lp:~ubuntu-minnesota/ubuntu-minnesota-projects/website

causes the error:

bzr: ERROR: Not a branch: "bzr+ssh://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-minnesota/ubuntu-minnesota-projects/website/".

This error is passed along to groundcontrol users and is confusing and upsetting as it seems to be telling them that their branch that they can see in launchpad, doesn't exist.

What I found out is that the branch has no revisions. It _is_ a branch, it's just an empty one, a sproutling perhaps.

Is it possible to get bazaar to give more meaningful error text in the case where it finds an empty launchpad bazaar branch?

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

Thanks for reporting this, I'm very interested in hearing feedback from ground-control users.

That branch does not in fact seem to exist yet at the bzr level, eg https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-minnesota/ubuntu-minnesota-projects/website/.bzr is 404. This may be a reflection of people creating the branch in the web ui but not yet pushing to it. I believe the lp code team is going to block that. If you push to or initialize that branch inside bzr then it should be ok.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

The web ui does say "this branch has not yet been pushed to". Maybe it should do something similar inside bzr.

[Martin Owens (doctormo)]

Perhaps since I know the branch exists in launchpad in GC (because the user just selected it) I could rewrite the error on the fly (I already rewrite some other errors to make them a little more friendly and fit in the box) to say "This branch is empty and has not been pushed to yet."

Thoughts? or Should I push more to have these changes reflected directly in bazaar?

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

I think you could rewrite that reasonably; perhaps Launchpad should give a better message though. There's not much we can do in the bzr client here.

[Tim Penhey (thumper)]

Both the last_scanned_id and revision_count are exported on the branch.

Are these sufficient for you to use in GC?

[Martin Owens (doctormo)]

that should be enough to make sure the error message is reformed. I'm setting this to a GC bug.