"bzr branch" downloads 10x the whole repo size through "dumb" http server (format 2a)?

[Marcin Wojdyr]

Hi all,
I see that bzr is not developed anymore, but maybe some developers are
still around.
That's the same question I asked on LP a week ago:
https://answers.launchpad.net/bzr/+question/227479

We have a few bzr repositories with anonymous "dumb" http access and
we observe that branching repository 150MB repository transfers 1.5GB
of data. After the download the size of new repository is the same as
the old one, 150MB. By the size of repository I mean the size of .bzr.
Similar thing was observed with other repos and on other computers.

Is this a known issue?

I googled and the only relevant discussion I found is this:
http://osdir.com/ml/bazaar/2010-01/msg00660.html

So it's clear that the overhead is necessary for "pull", but is it the
same for "branch"?

Clients: bzr 2.5 on Linux and OSX, server: Apache.

Marcin