problems adding files: no module named subvertpy error

I've set up a local repo for developing blender.
I pull to a pristine mirror of the blender.org trunk.
Then i pull to a local-trunk branch (usually bzr merge) and then merge again to my features-branch.
This had worked, but on my most recent attempt I got compile errors from missing directories. It seems that for files already existing, bzr can't create them. When I do a bzr merge from blender-svn to local-trunk, it says there is nothing to be done. But there are folders in blender-svn that aren't in local-trunk. (Yes, i commmitted blender-svn after synching with blender.org).

I tried creating a diff of the two branches and applying the patch. The patch creates somes files. I try bzr add . but it terminates with an error and appears that it was not successful (despite the adding... suggesting partial success).

kesten@kesten-K42Jr:~/VCP/Bazaar/blender/local-trunk$ bzr add .
adding blender/intern/raskter
adding blender/intern/raskter/CMakeLists.txt
adding blender/intern/raskter/SConscript
adding blender/intern/raskter/raskter.c
adding blender/intern/raskter/raskter.h
adding blender/release/datafiles/clkernelstoh.py
bzr: ERROR: Unable to import library "subvertpy": bzr-svn: No module named subvertpy

local-trunk$ bzr commit -m "apply diff from blender-svn"
Committing to: /home/kesten/VCP/Bazaar/blender/local-trunk/
bzr: ERROR: No changes to commit. Please 'bzr add' the files you want to commit, or use --unchanged to force an empty commit.

I thought the subvertpy error (which i get all the time now) was related to trying to get bzr-svn working. But i didn't think it would affect the core bzr methods.

any thoughts on what's going wrong?

kesten