Create new branch from Projects/Branches page

gitpod-io / gitpod

The developer platform for on-demand cloud development environments to create software faster and more securely.

https://www.gitpod.io

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0

12.84k stars 1.23k forks source link

Create new branch from Projects/Branches page #10168

Open mbrevoort opened 2 years ago

mbrevoort commented 2 years ago

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

As a user, I find it frustrating that I can't easily create a new branch from the Gitpod web UI.

Describe the behaviour you'd like

Navigate to Projects -> Branches page
Obvious call to action "Create Branch" or "New Branch"
Click "Create Branch" and a new git branch is created and appears in the list of branches.
I can the click existing "New Workspace" button.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Alternatively I can:

Go to the Github UI to create a new branch, come back to Gitpod UI branches page...
Create a workspace and open on main branch, use the terminal to create a new git branch, stop workspace, go to Gitpod UI branches page...
Git on my machine terminal

Additional context

newbranch

mbrevoort commented 2 years ago

Additionally, and this may be true already, but when branching from main, the prebuild could just be copied rather than built anew.

stale[bot] commented 2 years ago

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

mbrevoort commented 2 years ago

No stale bot, no.

mbrevoort commented 2 years ago

It would be great if there was a way to do this via the deep link URL as well something like https://gitpod.io/?action=create-branch#https://github.com/mbrevoort/my-repo

gtsiolis commented 2 years ago

@mbrevoort Alternatively, we could offer users more control on the workspace start page so that even if the branch does not exist they could ad-hoc create the branch and start a workspace in one click as long as they have permissions to create branches on the repository.

Currently, we show an error page with a nudge which is not so useful and an action button that throws the users back to square one, see screenshot below.

Opening a new workspace for a branch that does not exist

loujaybee commented 2 years ago

Note: Currently, I do this by going to GitHub, making a branch in the UI, then using the browser extension to open that branch (granted, you have to leave Gitpod) and it's probably not well known to many users.

Aside: I also wonder where we draw the line when re-implementing GitHub UX into Gitpod.