Comment 3 for bug 357818

Definatly reproducible.

You cannot join anything in a branch which has no history and hence has no root_id?

Shouldn't join generate a new root_id for the containing branch?

Note in the bzr st is says "/ => a/" which is clearly not the intention.

Workaround is $ bzr ci -m "Starting join" --unchanged to get yourselv revision 1.

$ bzr init no-history
$ cd no-history/
$ bzr branch ../a
Branched 1 revision(s).
$ bzr join a
$ bzr st
working tree is out of date, run 'bzr update'
renamed:
  / => a/
unknown:
  a/.bzr.retired.0/
$ bzr update
bzr: ERROR: branch has no revision null:
bzr update --revision only works for a revision in the branch history
$ bzr revno
0
$ bzr ci -m "????"
Committing to: /tmp/tada/no-history/
renamed => a
bzr: ERROR: An inconsistent delta was supplied involving 'aa', 'a-20100503130914-4twyn7in4cdd742n-1'
reason: working tree does not contain new entry