CVS merging and notification questions

[Paul Van Delst]

Hello,

Two questions, the first about merging, the other about notification.

We just set up a repository the other day where some source code files will diverge from a common 
root (same functionality, just different algorithms). The way I set this up was to create two 
branches -- call them branchA and branchB. For all intents and purposes the main trunk development 
has ended. One of the code devleopers made some changes to one of the branches (say branchA) and 
decided that *this* version should be the common root from which the two algorithms should diverge. 
Rather than ignore all the bold-faced warnings in the docs that say do not delete branches, I want 
to know if it's possible to merge changes from one branch (branchA) to another (branchB)? The 
documentation is decidedly unclear on this particular type of merge (everything seems geared to 
merging to the main trunk). I googled this yesterday and wanted to verify with the experts out there 
that doing a
  cvs update -r branchB  (switch working copy to branchB)
  cvs update -j branchA -j branchB
will merge the changes made to branchA onto branchB? A simple question I know, but I haven't found a 
definitive statement that this will work.

About the notification (this may be more a "mail" than a cvs question..a bit of both). I did the 
usual uncommenting of
   ALL mail %s -s "CVS notification"
in the notify file, set the watches and, sure enough, it works like a charm. The one change I would 
like to make would be to get the mail subject line to reflect the working file rather than a generic 

"CVS notification". I was wondering if using a trigger script could accomplish this? Could one put 
the following into the notify file (adapted from the taginfo example in the manual):
  ALL /home/me/bin/create_subject %s
where the script is
  #!/bin/sh
  echo "$@" > /home/me/cvsroot/CVSROOT/subject
?
Assuming this works (with enough changes such that different "subject" files are created based on 
user and file to avoid conflicts with simultaneous edits/commits), how would one get the contents of 
this subject file into the mail subject line itself? Or is there an easier/better way?

Thanks for any info.

cheers,

paulv

--
Paul van Delst
CIMSS @ NOAA/NCEP/EMC