Comment 8 for bug 893495

Okay, I think the logging issue is best handled upstream in bzrlib, see bug 714449 for that.

What I understand about the underlying problem from builddeb.merge_changelog from the output is:

* Running `bzr --no-plugins remerge debian/changelog` avoids the issue by disabling the changelog merge hook

* Despite stderr output, the merge hook returns "successful" but produces an empty debian/changelog

* The meaning of the errors is:

    dpkg-mergechangelogs: warning: /tmp/tmpiGP5_Sdeb_changelog_merge/changelog.this(l0): found eof where expected first heading

^ The hook is creating an empty changelog.this

    dpkg-mergechangelogs: error: ss-970814-1 is not a valid version

^ An early entry in the changelog has a bad version:

    egcs (ss-970814-1) experimental; urgency=low

      * Initial packaging (of initial snapshot!)

     -- Galen Hazelwood <email address hidden> Wed, 20 Aug 1997 00:36:28 +0000

* Merging the attached files here with dpkg-mergechangelogs works, without "not a valid version" appearing

* Merging the attached files with an empty changelog.this results in *some* output

Trying the same merge locally to work out where the hook is going wrong seems like a good next step, though some of this code has changed in more recent bzr-builddeb versions.