In general, the --xml-output flag should generate clean XML:

    $ darcs  pull --dry-run --xml-output http://darcs.arstecnica.it/our/sol | head -8
    Scarambol On Linux, central repository
    **********************
    <patches>
    <patch author='lele@nautilus.homeip.net' date='20080927115519' local_date='Sat Sep 27 13:55:19 CEST 2008' inverted='False' hash='20080927115519-97f81-dacab45d44916ac66a344393ba0426434a851913.gz'>
            <name>Initial Pylons project</name>
    </patch>
    <patch author='lele@nautilus.homeip.net' date='20080927122649' local_date='Sat Sep 27 14:26:49 CEST 2008' inverted='False' hash='20080927122649-97f81-f1b06e221196ca0453d96570c3997028db6ea6f6.gz'>
            <name>Nosetests options</name>
    Exception thrown by an atexit registered action:
    exception :: Darcs.SignalHandler.SignalException

In this case the MOTD should be xmlified in it own tag.

BTW, maybe the ending exception is suspicious as well? This is on

    $ darcs --version
    2.1.0 (+ 333 patches)

Thank you,
bye, lele.
-- 
nickname: Lele Gaifax    | Quando vivrò di quello che ho pensato ieri
real: Emanuele Gaifas    | comincerò ad aver paura di chi mi copia.
lele@nautilus.homeip.net |                 -- Fortunato Depero, 1929.

Thanks a lot for this report. I presume that you have been able to work around 
this problem by turning off the MOTD (Message Of The Day) or perhaps be some 
suitable pre-processing of the XML produced by darcs in your atexit action. It 
appears to be a problem that should be easy to fix, so would a volunteer please 
look into this? Confirming the behavior and a test case for this would be a good 
starting point.

Thanks and best regards
Thorkil

The following patch updated the status of issue1270 to be resolved:

* resolve issue1270: don't show the motd when --xml-output is given 
Ignore-this: e1dae49ceb510668a1358e2103268cc3