AEM 6.4: Products not visible after upgrade to 6.4

[Elkish]

We are having an issue with the products entered into the commerce system in AEM 6.4.  After upgrading from 6.3, I migrated our products to the new JCR location under /var/commerce based on the release notes.  While the folders themselves are now visible when navigating the products page , none of the products themselves appear in any of the directories.

Specifically, what appears to be happening is that calls to

http://localhost:4502/mnt/overlay/granite/ui/content/tree.0.html/var/commerce/products/examples?colu...

Will return the following, even if there are products in the /var/commerce/products/examples path:

{"items": [],"hasMore": false}

Notably, this only happens if we install 6.4 using the -r nosamplecontent parameter.  Navigating products works fine if the sample content is installed (but has problems with nested multifields due to the sample content registering a sling model for the /commerce/component/products resource type.)

Steps to reproduce:

1 - Create a fresh install of AEM 6.4 Using the "-r nosamplecontent" parameter

2 - Create a sling folder "example" under /var/commerce/products

3 - Create a product node under /var/commerce/products/example

4 - Navigate to http://localhost:4502/libs/commerce/gui/content/products.html/var/commerce/products/example

Expected: The product should be visible

Result: No product is visible

Does anyone know why the default install for 6.4 would prevent products from being visible in the commerce system?

[smacdonald2008]

Checking with Support team to see if this is a known upgrade issue.

[smacdonald2008]

Our customer care team replied --

"I think that a migration approach is not supported. It must be an in place upgrade "

[Elkish]

Our product data was relocated based on the following documentation from Adobe:

Adobe Experience Manager Help | E-Commerce Repository Restructuring in AEM 6.4

Additionally the examples present in the sample content had been moved to /var/commerce/products as well.  The problem persists on a fresh AEM install.  Replicating the issue is as simple as trying to create a product in an instance of 6.4 without the sample content installed - I can provide a package with an example product if needed.

[smacdonald2008]

If you have followed this Adobe doc and its not working - there could be a bug somewhere. Instructions from an Adobe doc should work. 

I advice opening a support ticket so our customer care team can report this bug so its fixed.

[Elkish]

After filing a ticket with Adobe support, the issue appears to be that code critical to making the e-commerce forms work is actually only available in the sample content.  It would be possible to to do a custom build of the sample content with just the code needed to make E-Commerce work correctly, however, based on how brittle the whole system is our team has chosen to store our product data another way.