I just now did a "make bootstrap" from the Git read-only mirror
(aside: i've given up on prodding git-remote-bzr -- wombat, sigh[0]),
followed by "rm -rf ~/.emacs.d/elpa", followed by "M-x list-packages".
I moved to ascii-art-to-unicode, typed ‘i’, saw "I", typed ‘x’, and now
see:

 Compiling file /home/ttn/.emacs.d/elpa/ascii-art-to-unicode-1.8/ascii-art-to-unicode-pkg.el at Sat May 24 08:50:33 2014
 Entering directory `/home/ttn/.emacs.d/elpa/ascii-art-to-unicode-1.8/'
 ascii-art-to-unicode-pkg.el:1:1:Warning: `"ascii"' is a malformed function

in the *Compile-Log* buffer.  Here is the full contents of the offending
file, manually wrapped for readability:

 (define-package
   "ascii-art-to-unicode" "1.8"
   "a small artist adjunct"
   'nil
   :url "http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/ascii-art-to-unicode.html"
   :keywords ("ascii" "unicode" "box-drawing"))

In ELPA admin/archive-contents.el func ‘archive--write-pkg-file’, i see
a call to ‘archive--alist-to-plist-args’, which by my reading should
include the missing quote before the open paren before "ascii", but
suspect that that func is not even being called in this whole process
since the -pkg file lacks the ";; Generated package description" blurb.

So there must be some other flow, hmmm.  What's the real story, here?


________________________
[0] On a positive note, i'm now resolved to try Bazaar proper;
    the slug finally reaches the starting line!


-- 
Thien-Thi Nguyen
   GPG key: 4C807502
   (if you're human and you know it)
      read my lisp: (responsep (questions 'technical)
                               (not (via 'mailing-list)))
                     => nil