@zaakiy you are not entitled to interact with me

@wh investigate why this happens

@zaakiy Investigated why Associated Branch / Create can be missing.

The side panel only shows that section when the current user can read code and either an associated branch already exists, or the user is allowed to create one (IssueSidePanel.newBranchContainer). Creation is allowed only if the user can write code and branch protection does not prevent creation of the prospective branch name issue-<number> (or <prefix>/issue-<number> when an issue branch prefix is set).

BranchProtection.preventCreation defaults to true, so any enabled protection rule whose branch pattern matches that name (commonly a catch-all like *) hides the whole section—even if the rule was mainly intended to block force-push/deletion. Protections are inherited from parent projects via getHierarchyBranchProtections(), which fits the workaround: moving the project under a new root drops the old parent's protections, so Create becomes visible again.

Please check an affected project (and its parent chain) under Settings → Code → Branch Protection for a rule matching issue-* / * with Prevent branch creation enabled. If present, either uncheck that option, narrow the pattern (e.g. main), or exclude issue branches (e.g. * -issue-*).

Want to confirm whether that matches what you see before proposing any code change.

@robin @wh I can confirm that there were no branch protection rules in place.

In fact, I checked every single setting within the project and within its parent project to look for something like this. It's the first thing I checked, and I can confirm that there was no branch protection rule in place.

Furthermore, this issue was not happening in a different project, and I compared the two projects to try to figure out what was different. Wherever I found even the most minute difference, I reset the settings of the "problem" project in question to be similar to the other "good" project in which I was able to create branches using this button. It still did not work.

It is entirely baffling to me, which is why I call it a regression.

@zaakiy you are not entitled to interact with me

@zaakiy have you checked branch protections of all parents to the root? Also make sure that you have write code permission over the project.

@robin I apologize for hijacking this issue, but I'm unable to open a new one:

Even changing the type alone from "Question" to "Bug" causes it.

@davidebeatrici fixed.

@robin yes, I can confirm that I checked all branch protections of all parents to the root.

I have no idea why this happens, as branch protection and write permission is the only gate. It might be helpful if you can attach a database reproducing the issue.

@robin Unfortunately, as part of testing the workaround, the original state is no longer available. Since this is a production server, I needed to also do some parent project hygiene to ensure that users did not face ambiguity in finding their projects within the project tree. Unfortunately, I am unable to reproduce this.

Happy to close this in the meantime, and I hope that the record of this issue may assist in identifying the root cause if it happens again in the future to us, or if somebody else raises it again in the future.

Closing now. Reopen if there is more clue.

@robin sorry for trying out Workhorse on this site. I was very curious.

@zaakiy no problem at all. Just need to triage issues myself and assign to AI user as necessary.