[Svnmerge] svnmerge init failure on fresh virgin checkout

[George Young]

svn, version 1.3.2 (r19776),  redhat linux fc3, x86
latest 
http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/contrib/client-side/svnmerge/svnmerge.py 
May 22, 12:14EST

% mkdir  foo
% cd foo
% svn co svn+ssh://svn.internal.itasoftware.com/svn/ita/trunk/qres
% svnmerge init
50370 lines (1822807 bytes) of output starting with:
svn log -v --xml --stop-on-copy "."
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<log>
<logentry
   revision="121106">
ending with:
  +(:xml-assert-equal "count(/qrs:QRSResponse/Read/History/Event[

svnmerge returns a value of 1, presumably failure. 

I ran svn log -v --xml --stop-on-copy "." directly; it writes 63216 
lines and seems to end normally.

Any hints as to what is wrong?  This was a fresh virgin checkout.  Am I 
hitting some kind of size limit?   There are 36008 files in this directory.

-- George

-- 
We do not see the world as it is.  We see the world as we are.
-- the Talmud