bzr can't create a branch via sftp

[TAC one]

I can't branch a repository on a remote directory.

bzr branch /home/tacone/tmp/my-repo sftp://tacone@localhost/home/tacone/mybranch
creates an empty directory with .bzr in it, but no other files. further pull/merge attempts in that dir will fail. Am I missing something ?

bzr pull /home/tacone/tmp/my-repo --directory sftp://tacone@localhost/home/tacone/mybranch
doesn't give any error message, and seemingly update the branch to the last revision. But no project files are written.

bzr merge /home/tacone/tmp/my-repo --directory sftp://tacone@localhost/home/tacone/mybranch
complains about the directory not having a checkout.

Bazaar (bzr) 1.7.1
  Python interpreter: /usr/bin/python 2.5.2
  Python standard library: /usr/lib/python2.5
  bzrlib: /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/bzrlib
  Bazaar configuration: /home/tacone/.bazaar
  Bazaar log file: /home/tacone/.bzr.log

[Matthew Fuller (fullermd)]

The underlying "bug" here is that there's no support for remote working trees. While a case could possibly be made that there should be, there are a lot of unpleasant issues to deal with in trying to do so, and AFAIK there isn't any expectation that it will ever be attempted, so I'm marking this Won't Fix.