Catch HTTPException when reading from remote http repository. If the server dies very early, an httplib.IncompleteRead exception may be raised, because httplib can't read a single byte. Catching all HTTPException subclasses here will prevent ugly backtraces for similar things, too.

%% no changes
%% no changes
%% uncompressed contents in repo
this is a test
%% uncompress our working dir copy
this is a test
%% uncompress our new working dir copy
this is a test