Error while checking out the elpa branch

[Tassilo Horn <tsdh@gnu.org>]

Hi all,

[I've started this mail as a question, but while writing I got aware
that the problem isn't my fault.  So no questions here, just "FYI".]

I've just wanted to setup the emacs dev workspace on some machine as
documented on http://emacswiki.org/emacs/BzrForEmacsDevs.  When checking
out the elpa branch, I got an assertion error in bzr.

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
% bzr init-repo emacs
Shared repository with trees (format: 2a)
Location:
  shared repository: emacs
% cd emacs
% bzr branch bzr+ssh://tsdh@bzr.savannah.gnu.org/emacs/trunk trunk
Branched 110872 revisions.
% bzr branch bzr+ssh://tsdh@bzr.savannah.gnu.org/emacs/elpa elpa
bzr: ERROR: exceptions.AssertionError: ('not present: %r', StaticTuple('', '', 'TREE_ROOT'))

Traceback (most recent call last): ...
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

It turns out, the issue is known for more than a year.

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr/+bug/830947

There's a patch available since a few months at

  http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~rrw/bzr/830947-tree-root-exception/revision/6538

Using that bzr version, I can get the elpa branch without errors.

The contents of the emacs/elpa directory seem to be identical between
the one checked out with bzr 2.5.1 with error, and the version checked
out with the bzr/830947-tree-root-exception branch.  However, there are
differences in emacs/.bzr/.

I've asked in the bug report if it's safe to work on the elpa branch
using bzr 2.5.1 once you've checked it out initially using the
830947-tree-root-exception branch.  (Maybe it's also ok to just ignore
the error.  Who knows...)

Oh, and Stefan also reported this bug in February:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr/+bug/937101
  Status: confirmed, Importance: Low

Low importance, seriously?  Am I a bit too sensitive in that this
doesn't really boost my trust in bzr?

I've added a link to the older report as Stefan's report seems to be a
duplicate.  And the older one is of High Importance with a fix (which
might or might not be correct), so hopefully it'll find it's way into
the mainline anytime soon.

Bye,
Tassilo