removing a directory

[Jason Trotter]

Here's my situation.  Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

We're trying to remove an empty directory from the
trunk of our CVS repository.
We would like to have it removed in such a way that
whenever a developer performs a checkout of the latest
version of the trunk, the directory in question does
not appear in his/her working area.
But, if we can't have the behavior described in the
previous sentence, at the very least we'd like to have
the following behavior: when we remove the directory
from the trunk, then create a branch (performing some
modifications in the branch which are unrelated to the
removed directory), then merge the branch back into
the trunk, the directory in question should not appear
when someone does a checkout.

Here are some solutions we've tried or thought about,
and why they don't work for us.

1) Following the recommendation in a reference book we
have, use 'cvs update -P' to remove the directory.  We
tried this.  The problem is when someone does a
checkout, the directory still appears.  Even after
branching and merging, when someone does a checkout,
the directory still appears.

2) Simply have all developers use the -P flag when
they checkout.  The problem is there are _some_ empty
directories developers should have in their working
area (bin/, lib/, etc.), and when we use 'cvs co -P',
these directories are absent.

3) Use 'cvs update -P' as before, and maintain a tag
to signify the latest stable revisions in the trunk
and have developers checkout with this tag.  There are
a couple problems with this.  The first and more
apparent problem is the recurring effort involved in
maintaining this tag.  The second and more serious
problem is that when developers checkout with a
non-branch tag, they cannot commit their changes.

4) Use 'cvs update -P' as before, and have developers
use 'cvs update -d' to remove unwanted directories
immediately after checkout.  We tried this.  'cvs
update -d' does not remove the unwanted directory from
the working area.

Any insight / suggestions would be very beneficial.

Thanks,
Jason