diff --git a/src/daemon/rpmostreed-deployment-utils.cxx b/src/daemon/rpmostreed-deployment-utils.cxx
index 0b3ed52b21..23590f6834 100644
--- a/src/daemon/rpmostreed-deployment-utils.cxx
+++ b/src/daemon/rpmostreed-deployment-utils.cxx
@@ -768,7 +768,8 @@ rpmostreed_update_generate_variant (OstreeDeployment *booted_deployment,
 
   if (staged_deployment)
     {
-      rpmostree_output_message ("enter staged");
+      g_debug ("Computing diff with staged deployment");
+
       /* ok we have a staged deployment; we just need to do a simple diff and BOOM done! */
       /* XXX: we're marking all pkgs as BASE right now even though there could be layered
        * pkgs too -- we can tease those out in the future if needed */
@@ -794,8 +795,6 @@ rpmostreed_update_generate_variant (OstreeDeployment *booted_deployment,
         }
 
       /* now we look at the rpm-md/layering side */
-      const OstreeRepo &tmp_repo = *repo;
-      const GCancellable &tmp_cancellable = *cancellable;
       g_autofree char *origin_remote = NULL;
       g_autofree char *origin_ref = NULL;
 
@@ -807,7 +806,7 @@ rpmostreed_update_generate_variant (OstreeDeployment *booted_deployment,
       else
         {
           CXX_TRY_VAR (res,
-                       rpmostreecxx::compare_local_to_remote_container (tmp_repo, tmp_cancellable,
+                       rpmostreecxx::compare_local_to_remote_container (*repo, *cancellable,
                                                                         r.refspec.c_str ()),
                        error);