Alice creates a branch %alice-mods% and commits changes to it Bob creates his own branch: %cvs checkout -r bob-better-mods% Bob merges changes from Alice's branch into his branch: %cvs update -j alice-mods% Bob immediately tags Alice's branch to mark his merge: %cvs rtag -F -r alice-mods alice-mods-bob% Alice commits some more changes to her branch Bob merges those new changes into his branch using the tag he set to mark his previous merge: %cvs update -j alice-mods-bob -j alice-mods% Bob immediately updates his merge-marking tag: %cvs rtag -F -r alice-mods alice-mods-bob%