Bug#826146: /usr/bin/uscan: uscan errors out on watchfile that is OK in stable

[Wookey]

Package: devscripts
Version: 2.16.4
Severity: normal
File: /usr/bin/uscan

The watch file in couchdb is like this:
debian/watch
version=3
http://couchdb.apache.org/ \
(?:.*/|.*=|)apache-couchdb[\-\._](\d\S*)\.(?:tar\.xz|txz|tar\.bz2|tbz2|tar\.gz|tgz)(?:/\S*)?

Testing in a fresh, clean, unstable with couchdb build-deps
installed, in the current couchdb (1.4.0-3), we find:

$ uscan
Undefined subroutine &main::uscan_die called at /usr/bin/uscan line 1713.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/bin/uscan line 1718.

I assume that's a bug? Should uscan fail in this way? Even with an
oldish watch file?

uscan in stable with the same couchdb source (current, as it was not released in
jessie) does this:

$ uscan
couchdb: Newer version (1.6.1) available on remote site:
  https://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.lua?path=/couchdb/source/1.6.1/apache-couchdb-1.6.1.tar.gz
  (local version is 1.4.0)
couchdb: Possible OpenPGP signature found at:
   https://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.lua?path=/couchdb/source/1.6.1/apache-couchdb-1.6.1.tar.gz.asc.
  Please consider adding opts=pgpsigurlmangle=s/$/.asc/
  to debian/watch.  see uscan(1) for more details.
Unknown or no compression used in ../apache-couchdb-1.6.1.tar.gz. at /usr/bin/mk-origtargz line 336.
uscan: error: mk-origtargz --package couchdb --version 1.6.1 --compression gzip --directory .. --copyright-file debian/copyright ../apache-couchdb-1.6.1.tar.gz gave error exit status 255

So that correctly finds and downloads apache-couchdb-1.6.1.tar.gz, but
then barfs because the '../apache-couchdb-1.6.1.tar.gz' is actually an
HTML page listing mirrors. This is the behaviour I would expect (given
that upstream have obviously changed things).

The point is that the new uscan just seems to crash, which seems like
a regression?


-- Package-specific info:

--- /etc/devscripts.conf ---

--- ~/.devscripts ---
Not present