bzr: ERROR: Target directory "." already exists. (bzr branch into current dir)

[Paul Sladen]

Asking bzr to branch into the current directory produces:

  $ bzr branch lp:somewhere/something .
  bzr: ERROR: Target directory "." already exists.

This seems to be a case of bzr trying to be too clever and I think the complaint should perhaps only be shown if $target/.bzr/ already exists, rather than just $target/ itself. If I read bug #120511 correctly, this may have originally tried to be fixed.

[Andrew Bennetts (spiv)]

There's already the --use-existing-dir option to provide this behaviour.

So the issues I see are:

 1. is the current behaviour a good default? (My feeling is yes.)
 2. the error message doesn't suggest --use-existing-dir, but probably should.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Having the error message explictly mention that '--use-existing-dir' will override the check would be good enough for me.

(Interestingly, I had presumed that --use-existing-dir was only relevant when pushing remotely, and it did not occur to me that it would be usable locally. It's use did not occur to me, even knowing about it).