Comment 6 for bug 660935

Using the following shell-like script, I can't reproduce the problem with neither bzr-2.2.0 nor 2.2.1:

$ bzr init trunk
Created a standalone tree (format: 2a)
$ cd trunk
$ echo trunk > file
$ bzr add
adding file
$ bzr commit -m 'create file on trunk'
2>Committing to: .../trunk/
2>added file
2>Committed revision 1.
$ cd ..
$ bzr branch trunk featureA
2>Branched 1 revision(s).
$ cd featureA
$ echo featureA > file
$ bzr commit -m 'modify file for featureA'
2>Committing to: .../featureA/
2>modified file
2>Committed revision 2.
$ cd ..
$ cd trunk
$ bzr rm file
2>deleted file
$ bzr commit -m 'Delete file'
2>Committing to: .../trunk/
2>deleted file
2>Committed revision 2.
$ cd ../featureA
$ bzr merge ../trunk
2>RM file => file.THIS
2>Contents conflict in file
2>1 conflicts encountered.
$ bzr conflicts
Contents conflict in file
$ bzr resolve --take-other

I realize you can't use it directly (it's available with bzr-2.3b3 though), but it should reproduce what you described (minus the local trunk part that I simplified).

May be you can tweak it to make it fail in your case ?