[MERGE] Fix warning on working trees during push

[James Blackwell]

On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 02:10:17PM -0600, John A Meinel wrote:
> First, I would change the 'warning(Unable to update)' line to say:
> 'note(Unable to update)'
> This fixes the problem that users see 'WARNING' when really it is just
> informing them.

The problem word is not "WARNING", but "unable". I've listened to people
very closely and for over a dozen observances seen the exact same result 
every single time:

 1. About 1/3 of new users understand that there's RCS data, and
    that .bzr has something to do with it. Regardless of what magic
    happens there, the working tree is still part of the RCS dataset.

 2. About 2/3 of users think the working tree is the RCS. They are
    completely unaware of the man behind the .bzr/ curtain.

Every time I have watched somebody I've seen these same steps occur every
single time:

1. They bzr push a branch for the first time over sftp
2. Bzr emits "bzr: WARNING: Unable to update the working tree of: %s"
3. Users understand that bzr has failed. To check their assumption, they
   examine where they pushed.  About 1/2 notice that there's a hidden .bzr
   dir, about 1/2 see an empty directory.
4. In almost all cases they think its a partially pushed branch that did not
   finish. They consistantly and universally draw the conclusion that bzr
   branch is broken for them.

The WARNING doesn't need to be changed to a NOTE, though it won't hurt if
its changed to NOTE. The wording though, needs to be changed, preferably
in a way that breaks the intuitive link between working trees and RCS
data. Even if it were: 

bzr: WARNING: Branch successful. Working tree may not have been pushed.


> I'm ambivalent about putting a file into the working tree. If there are
> no files there, it is nice to see something (since .bzr is normally
> hidden). But if there are files there, it is a little bit ugly to put
> another file in the midst of them.

Aye. There needs to be something though. Apache dirindex hides dotfiles by
default. People are pushing branches and seeing empty dirs. They're
thinking nothing happened. 

> The WARNING should be changed for 0.7. I think we can change the message
> so that people understand what is going on. What about instead of
> warning('Unable to update the working tree of: %s' % (br_to.base,))
> 
> We use:
> 
> note('* Unable to update the working tree of: %s\n* Only the branch
> information inside .bzr/ will be updated', br_to.base)
>
> With that message, it makes it reasonably clear that we are updating the
> remote branch, and that people should look for .bzr.
> 
> If we wanted to be a little bit more complete we could do:
> 
> note('* Unable to update the working tree. Only the branch information
> inside %s/.bzr/ will be updated', br_to.base)
> 
> With this message, people can browse exactly to where the branch
> information exists, so they can see that there are files created there.
> And we make it clear that things are working, just not completely.
> 
> John
> =:->
> 



-- 
James Blackwell's home :  http://jblack.linuxguru.net
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