no clear error message when failing to push via http when bzr+http POSTs work and plain http GETs don't

The specific issue here seems to be that bzr+http is working fine, but at some early point bzr tries to do a plain GET of the branch-format file (rather than via HPSS), which gets a 404, and so you get a typically unhelpful NotABranch error.

I think the primary issue here is a server misconfiguration (it's always going to be confusing to have some URLs work for HPSS POSTs but not HTTP GETs), but I think it's possible for bzr to do better here.

Some things we could do to improve this:
 * report back to the user that it appears that plain HTTP is failing, not HPSS, so that they can give a useful "it doesn't work" report to the site admin
 * try an HPSS get if HTTP GET fails
 * stop using VFS entirely!
 * maybe something else?

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Andrew Bennetts wrote:
> The specific issue here seems to be that bzr+http is working fine, but
> at some early point bzr tries to do a plain GET of the branch-format
> file (rather than via HPSS), which gets a 404, and so you get a
> typically unhelpful NotABranch error.
>

IIRC, if you "bzr branch http://" then we do normal GET via http, but we
do smart requests via POST.

If you do "bzr branch bzr+http://" then all VFS activity goes via POST
and smart requests, rather than direct http requests.

See other comments in the past about hosting using MS IIS, and issues
with that.

The good of using this method is that static files (most format files,
etc) can be cached through intermediate proxies, etc. The bad is that if
people have incorrect configurations then they get a bit of garbage.

John
=:->

 status: confirmed
 importance: low

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