Restore "Merge pull request #153 from davecheney/112-state-life-takes-a-tag"

Blame for the jenkins local-upgrade-precise-amd64 job failure looks like it
lies elsewhere.
Merge pull request #161 from bz2/restore_pr153

Restore "Merge pull request #153 from davecheney/112-state-life-takes-a-tag"

Blame for the jenkins local-upgrade-precise-amd64 job failure looks like it
lies elsewhere.