"git ubuntu build" sometimes demands --target-branch but that option doesn't exist

[Robie Basak]

11/08/2018 13:19:19 - ERROR:Unable to automatically determine importer branch: Multiple candidate branches found and they do not target the same series: pkg/ubuntu/wily-devel, pkg/ubuntu/wily-proposed, pkg/ubuntu/xenial, pkg/ubuntu/xenial-devel, pkg/ubuntu/yakkety, pkg/ubuntu/yakkety-devel, pkg/debian/stretch, pkg/debian/buster, pkg/debian/sid, pkg/ubuntu/wily. Please pass --target-branch.

...

git-ubuntu: error: unrecognized arguments: --target-branch

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I take it this error message can be ignored when it comes up? Or does it indicate an actual fault that the user needs to deal with?

I spent some time trying several permutations on passing --target-branch but nothing was getting recognized.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I ran into this again and dug into it further. Both for my previous run-in and again in this one, it was a bit of a red herring and the actual problem was something different.

I was running `git ubuntu build-source`, which as part of its processing triggers a run of `git ubuntu lint`. --target-branch is an option that pertains to lint, not build-source, and there's no way to pass it in (AFACT). (The error message inside lint probably should be refined a bit to avoid this confusion). But from what I understand of the code it should never be necessary to pass this in; if this error crops up during a build-source (or build) operation, it's more likely something else has had an error.