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subtask inheritance is maybe not convenient in preponderance of cases?
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Description

Clicking on "Create Subtask" creates a form that inherits many fields from the parent. This sounds convenient, but anecdotally from my use and internal reports it ends up being unhelpful more often than not.

  • We have a "type: task/story/epic" custom fields. The children of epics are virtually never epic themself.
  • We have a "size" custom field. A subtask is rarely the same size (that's the point of breaking it up). I think the same would hold true for Points.
  • On this install, long subscribers lists are rarely carried forward to sub-tasks.
  • If a task is closed, I'm not sure what corner case that involves creating new subtasks would use new closed subtasks

Without data I'm unsure if the behavior is inconvenient more often, or if the annoyance burns a stronger memory than the delight.

Event Timeline

cburroughs moved this task from Restricted Project Column to Restricted Project Column on the Restricted Project board.

Does copy not cover this in field definition?

copy: If true, this field's value will be copied when an object is created using another object as a template.

Well the custom fields were probably poor examples...

Do you have concrete examples? I believe we only pull over subscribers and tags.

You can see which fields are copied in Edit TaskConfigure FormUsing HTTP Parameters and scrolling down to "Template Objects". On this install, these fields are currently copied:

Screen Shot 2016-05-04 at 7.38.05 AM.png (531×856 px, 40 KB)

Note that, contrary to the table above, "status" is not copied: it is explicitly set to the default open status (per maniphest.statuses configuration). T10719 discusses why it is copied by default when using template.

Ultimately, the same set of fields are used for "Create Subtask" and HTTP parameter templating. Some possible approaches might be:

  • Remove "Create Subtask".
  • Also special case "points" on "Create Subtask", since that seems to be the major un-configurable field with different behavior?
  • Allow you to edit which fields "template" copies, or define multiple templates? T10719 has extensive discussion about options here.

See also T10034, maybe.