Working on several tickets
You do not need a second site to work on a second ticket.
A site is the expensive part: a clone of wordpress-develop, an npm install, and a first build — minutes of work, and the thing this app exists to spare you. A ticket is the cheap part. Each ticket you link gets its own branch inside the site, so moving between them is a file swap that takes seconds rather than another clone and another install.
Each ticket keeps its own work. What you edited for one ticket is not in the tree while you are on another, and the patch you submit for a ticket contains only that ticket's changes.
Starting a second ticket
While a ticket is linked, the Trac ticket panel shows that ticket rather than a field to type another one into. So starting a second ticket is two steps:
- Click Unlink. Your work on the first ticket is parked on its branch and the site returns to trunk — nothing is lost, and the ticket appears under Your tickets on this site.
- Type the second ticket's number into the field that is now back, and click Link ticket.
Nothing is installed and nothing is rebuilt: node_modules and the database belong to the site, and both stay exactly as they are.
The build/ directory belongs to the site too, which has a consequence. A switch changes the source under src/, but it does not rebuild — so a dev server that is running keeps serving the assets built for the ticket you just left. Run npm run build in the Terminal after switching if you want to see the other ticket's changes in the browser. The site view says the same thing: Edited files in src/? Run npm run build so the site picks them up.
Your tickets on this site
The site's tickets get their own card, between the Trac ticket card and Apply a patch or PR. Like those two, it appears once the setup checklist is finished or skipped, and only when the site has work on a ticket other than the one you are on — a site with nothing else to offer does not get an empty card.
With a ticket linked, the card is headed Other tickets on this site, and each row offers to switch:
With no ticket linked, the same card is headed Your tickets on this site, and each row is a Continue working on #NNNNN link. This is how you come back to a ticket without having to remember its number:
Rows are listed most recently used first, with edited 2 days ago underneath — and after a week, the date itself. Every control on the card is disabled while an install, a build or a trunk update is running, because all three are writing to the same working directory a switch would swap.
What a switch says while it runs
A switch is a scan of the working tree followed by a checkout. On a real wordpress-develop that is seconds, not minutes, but it is long enough that a silent window looks like a hung one — so the panel narrates it, under a spinner:
- Saving your work on #59234… — the ticket you are leaving is being committed to its branch. This is the part worth waiting out: it is the stretch where your edits are written down.
- Checking which files change…
- Swapping files for #61002… 63%
- Ready to work on #61002
If the file swap itself fails part-way — an editor or an antivirus holding a file open is the usual cause — the app marks the site and refuses every further ticket action with A previous switch from … to … did not finish. Retry it before making other changes. The refusal is on the switch too, so the way out is Unlink, which is the one action it allows: that puts you back on trunk, and you can then link the ticket you wanted. Your work on the ticket you were leaving is not at risk; it was committed to its branch before any file moved.
Do not force-quit during a switch. A killed process writes no such marker, so the half-swapped tree is left behind with nothing saying so.
Deleting a ticket's work
Delete this ticket's work, on each row, throws that ticket's branch away — every change you made for it, whether or not you ever submitted it. It asks first: Delete all work on #61002 on this site? This cannot be undone. There is no undo afterwards.
The card only lists tickets you are not on, so this is never offered for the ticket in hand. To throw away the one you are working on, Unlink it first; its row then appears with the rest.
Deleting is deliberately a different gesture from switching, and from unlinking. Unlink on the Trac ticket panel only puts the site back on trunk: the ticket's work stays on its branch, and the ticket reappears under Your tickets on this site, ready to continue.
Edits you made before picking a ticket
If you started editing before you linked a ticket, those edits are on trunk, which the app never commits to. So when you link a ticket, it stops and asks what should happen to them:
- Take these edits into #NNNNN — the edits come along and become part of that ticket's work. This is the answer for I started editing, then realised which ticket this is.
- Save them as a patch, then start clean… — the app asks where to save a
.diff, then discards the edits and links the ticket. Cancelling the save dialog cancels the whole option and leaves everything as it was. - Discard them and start clean — the edits are lost; this cannot be undone, and it asks again before doing it.
- Cancel — nothing happens. No branch is created and no ticket is linked.
Take these edits into #NNNNN is offered only for a ticket this site has not worked on yet. A ticket that already has a branch has its own work waiting to be restored, so loose edits cannot ride into it; the panel says so, and the other three choices stay.
When the edits do come along, the panel says where they went: Your 1 uncommitted change came along into #62281, and will go into its patch.
If you saved them instead, the confirmation names the file — Your edits were saved to … and are no longer in the working tree — and stays on screen after the switch, so the path does not vanish with the panel that offered it.
Linking a ticket from a clean tree asks nothing and shows nothing. There is a standing line under the Link ticket field to say the question exists: If you have edited anything already, you will be asked what should happen to those edits.
Unsubmitted work for the ticket you are on
Once a ticket has changes that have not been submitted anywhere, the Trac ticket card says so:
You have 1 unsubmitted change for ticket #29798. You can review and submit or discard your changes.
This counts the ticket's whole work — including everything parked when you last switched away, which is most of it if you move between tickets. It is measured the same way the patch is, so the note and the diff are two readings of one walk rather than two answers. The count is of everything the patch speaks about, which includes the files it can only name rather than carry: change nothing but an image and the note still says one unsubmitted change, while the diff itself is empty.
Under it is the reassurance that matters here: unlinking the ticket does not touch those changes. They stay attached to the ticket in this site, ready for when you link it again.
What a patch contains
A patch is everything on the ticket's branch since the point it was created — only that ticket's work, never another's, and never a change that arrived from a trunk update.
That last point has a consequence worth knowing. A ticket branch keeps the snapshot of trunk it was born on, even after you update the site to the latest trunk. The patch stays correct against that snapshot, which is what keeps it free of upstream changes you did not write — but a branch you started weeks ago produces a patch that may no longer apply to today's trunk.
The app has no way to replay an old ticket branch onto a newer trunk. Doing it by hand means, in order: update the site to the latest trunk so there is a newer snapshot to branch from; save the ticket's patch from Review & submit changes; Unlink the ticket, so its row appears on the tickets card and Delete this ticket's work becomes available for it — the card never offers to delete the ticket you are on; link the ticket again, which creates a fresh branch on the updated trunk; and apply the saved patch to it.