open_branch() on a remote lightweight checkout tries to open a local branch

[Neil Martinsen-Burrell]

When trying to open the parent branch of a checkout on a remote machine using the bzrlib API, I tried:

REMOTE = 'remote.example.com'
from bzrlib import bzrdir
a_bzrdir, relpath =
bzrdir.BzrDir.open_containing('bzr+ssh://%s/Users/nmb/tmp/blech' %
REMOTE)
branch = a_bzrdir.open_branch()

which fails with

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
 File "bzrlib/remote.py", line 584, in open_branch
   location=response[1], ignore_fallbacks=ignore_fallbacks)
 File "bzrlib/branch.py", line 2300, in open
   location, possible_transports=possible_transports)
 File "bzrlib/bzrdir.py", line 826, in open
   return BzrDir.open_from_transport(t, _unsupported=_unsupported)
 File "bzrlib/bzrdir.py", line 856, in open_from_transport
   redirected)
 File "bzrlib/transport/__init__.py", line 1666, in do_catching_redirections
   return action(transport)
 File "bzrlib/bzrdir.py", line 843, in find_format
   transport, _server_formats=_server_formats)
 File "bzrlib/controldir.py", line 752, in find_format
   raise errors.NotBranchError(path=transport.base)
bzrlib.errors.NotBranchError: Not a branch: "/Users/nmb/tmp/blech/.bzr/branches/trunk/".

even though:

$ ssh remote.example.com
remote$ bzr info /Users/nmb/tmp/blech/.bzr/branches/trunk
Repository branch (format: 2a)
Location:
 shared repository: tmp/blech/.bzr/branches
 repository branch: tmp/blech/.bzr/branches/trunk
remote$ bzr info /Users/nmb/tmp/blech
Lightweight checkout (format: 2a)
Location:
 light checkout root: tmp/blech
  checkout of branch: tmp/blech/.bzr/branches/trunk
   shared repository: tmp/blech/.bzr/branches

and:

$ bzr info bzr+ssh://remote.example.com/Users/nmb/tmp/blech/.bzr/branches/trunk
Repository branch (format: unnamed)Location:
 shared repository:
bzr+ssh://quaggy-e.mooo.info/Users/nmb/tmp/blech/.bzr/branches/
 repository branch:
bzr+ssh://quaggy-e.mooo.info/Users/nmb/tmp/blech/.bzr/branches/trunk/
$ bzr info bzr+ssh://quaggy-e.mooo.info/Users/nmb/tmp/blech
$

I expected to get a branch on the remote sever that I could interact with.

It even seems that if there is a branch on the local machine at /Users/nmb/tmp/blech, then the open_branch call will work but it will return the local branch.

[John A Meinel (jameinel)]

The ReferenceLocation is being stored as an absolute path, and is probably even a file:// url. We certainly have talked about changing it to a relative URL segment when reasonable (../other/location rather than always /path/to/other/location).