Show the matching protected branch pattern causing branch creation to fail
Problem to solve
When trying to create a protected branch without the required permissions, GitLab helpfully outputs a message explaining that the branch is protected. However, protected branches can be reserved in advance with globs, and it may not be obvious to the user which glob they matched.
Intended users
Anyone creating branches
User experience goal
The user should be able to tell at a glance which part of the branch name was illegal
Proposal
Expand the error message with the pattern that matched the branch name. The message currently says
You are not allowed to create protected branches on this project.but I would like it to say something like:
You are not allowed to create protected branches on this project (branch name "$branch" matched protected branch pattern "$pattern")Further details
As an example affecting our own engineers, gitlab-org/gitlab seems to have a glob of the form *auto-deploy*, preventing any branch with auto-deploy as a substring from being created.
This is understandable, as it has to do with how GitLab.com is deployed, but GitLab also has a feature called Auto Deploy, and an external CI component called auto-deploy-image. Thus, engineers are likely to end up using auto-deploy as a substring in their branch name when working on a feature, and have a hard time figuring out why that branch name is protected. I have personally run into this, and so has @Alexand. The error message looks like this:
$ git push -u origin jcunha/set-auto-deploy-image-to-0-17-0
Enumerating objects: 16, done.
Counting objects: 100% (16/16), done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (9/9), done.
Writing objects: 100% (9/9), 1.89 KiB | 646.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 9 (delta 7), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
remote: GitLab: You are not allowed to create protected branches on this project.
To gitlab.com:gitlab-org/gitlab.git
! [remote rejected] jcunha/set-auto-deploy-image-to-0-17-0 -> jcunha/set-auto-deploy-image-to-0-17-0 (pre-receive hook declined)
error: failed to push some refs to 'git@gitlab.com:gitlab-org/gitlab.git'the relevant line here is
remote: GitLab: You are not allowed to create protected branches on this project.I would have liked to see
remote: GitLab: You are not allowed to create protected branches on this project
(branch name "jcunha/set-auto-deploy-image-to-0-17-0" matched protected branch pattern "*auto-deploy*")