Comment 9 for bug 594958

Here is the background story of these matching bugs. Hope it will help
1. Michael and Bruce are both bazaar newbies.
2. Trunk created on Bruce's machine
3. Trunk branched to USB drive then again branched to Michaels machine
4. Michael & Bruce each make their own (different) feature branches ...
5. ... and after some edits send each other patches and successfully merge patches with their respective trunks. They then successfully merge their own feature branches with their trunks.
6. They each push/pull changes from trunk to their own feature branch.
7. Repeat from step 5. except that this time the patches crash as initially reported for this bug for BOTH Bruce and Michael.

8. We lay low for a while, then Bruce pushes his trunk and feature branch changes to USB drive.
9. He drives 40 minutes to Michaels place, and manages to merge etc until both trunks and feature branches are up to date, drives 40 minutes home and pushes changes back to his trunk feature branch on his machine.

10. Repeat step 5. this time with success.
11. Michael makes the deduction that step 6. was what 'broke' our system, so we keep repeating step 5.

So far I think we have two to three successful repeats each of step 5.

Only slight problem is that our feature branches are becoming more and more out of date.
Was the cause of this 'bug' an error of procedure on our part?
If so, what is the proper way to keep feature branches up to date? Delete them (working tree and .bzr) and recreate them with a new branch command?