"Invalid value" error when entering a valid URL for a branch

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Steps to reproduce:
1. Go to https://launchpad.net/products/malone/+bug/40066/+addbranch
2. In the "Branch" field, enter sftp://chinstrap.ubuntu.com/home/warthogs/archives/mpt/launchpad/2006-06-bug-attachments
3. Click "Continue"

What should happen: The branch is registered with the bug report.

What actually happens: An "Invalid value" error.

[Diogo Matsubara (matsubara)]

The problem here is that the vocabulary looks for branches associated to the product, since malone doesn't have any branches associated with it, the vocabulary will not find your branch and return a generic "Invalid value".
It'd nice to have a better message clearly stating what was the problem (bug 4576).
Matthew do you think this is a dupe of that bug or that the branch should be automatically registered as a malone branch (As per
https://launchpad.net/products/malone/+addbranch)?

[James Henstridge (jamesh)]

Automatically registering the branch would be a bit difficult: what do you name it? what product do you associate it with?

We do need a proper branch vocabulary though, perhaps recognising the URLs of previously registered branches.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

"what do you name it?"
The last part of the URL, uniquified with a number if necessary.

"what product do you associate it with?"
The one for the context in which I'm viewing the bug report.

The bottom line is that if I have to go through four page loads and more than one text field just to link a branch to a bug, I really can't be bothered.

[Brad Bollenbach (bradb)]

At the very least, the error message is uninformative.

Longer term, it might be nice to wizard the user through registering the branch, which should, ideally, add just one extra page load to the workflow when adding a branch we don't yet know about.

The branch shouldn't just be auto-registered though, because of typos and other human error.