Will CVS let me pull in a revision between two existing ones?

[Doug Lee]

I'm finally setting up a CVS repository for work we do at my company,
and after piling through cvs.info and bouncing around in cvs(1) and
through a number of CVS-related web sites, I think I've found answers
to all of my questions but one:

Can I import (or otherwise pull in) a revision of sources that is
chronologically between two revisions already in the repository?

The reason I want to do this is that we have source files embedded in
projects which sprang from, eventually returned to, but are not
identical to any revision in our local library of code modules.
Example of development cycle:  While working on a project, a code file
I'll call file1 is written.  It becomes useful in some similar form in
several projects, so we take the time to write a generic version and
put it in the code library.  Sometime later, while working on another
project, I find I have to update it within that project.  The update
turns out to be useful elsewhere, so it later gets merged by hand back
into the library.  (Yes, I know...this whole scenario is the whole
purpose of systems like CVS; but of all the things CVS can do, time
regression (so I can have managed all this right the first time) isn't
one of them.)

If I can indeed slip a mid-way revision in somehow, I can start
building the repository immediately; otherwise, I fear I'll have to do
a massive file organization first to line up all the revisions of
individual files.  In the docs, I saw a (dangerous but possible) way
to remove a mid-way revision, but not a way to make one.  I'm up for
editing repository files if I must for this, but I want the final
result to look like I committed the revisions in chronological order.
Due to the way CVS numbers revisions, I doubt what I want can be done,
at least without a major repository overhaul; but I figure it won't
hurt to ask anyway.

Thanks for any help.


-- 
Doug Lee, Access Technology Programmer, Bartimaeus Group
mailto:doug at bartsite.com         http://www.bartsite.com
"While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done,
it was done." --Helen Keller