Can I maintain config files as a CVS branch w/o messing up mergemaster etc.?

[Doug Lee]

I track STABLE and wonder if there's a clean way for me to use CVS to
do it (without having the whole CVS repo on my box).  Example:  I
modify /etc/rc.firewall and then cvsup my way up to a more current
STABLE.  The normal tactic is to hand-merge via mergemaster, but I
think there should be a way for me to get CVS to do it:

    cvsup/mergemaster for fresh system (hypothetical of course)
    (current /etc/rc.firewall is now exactly the STABLE version)
    make local mods
    cvs commit mods (locally)
    cvsup
    use CVS instead of Mergemaster to merge in changes since last cvsup

Problems:

1.  FreeBSD itself uses CVS, so I don't think I can just create a repo
of my config files and pull in cvsups as a vendor branch.

2.  Mergemaster (which might still be useful alongside this sometimes)
uses CVS Id strings to notice when a file hasn't really changed in the
main FreeBSD repository, so even if I do start managing my config
files by CVS despite the above issue, I think I'd be making
Mergemaster throw a lot more stuff at me to do myself.

Comments and ideas welcome.  Please Cc me if that's ok.


-- 
Doug Lee           dgl at dlee.org        http://www.dlee.org
Bartimaeus Group   doug at bartsite.com   http://www.bartsite.com
"Pray devoutly, but hammer stoutly."
--Sir William G. Benham