Merge issue--pilot error, to be sure, but...

[Laird Nelson]

Having just blown a large merge, I am in deeply humble learning mode.

This strikes me as a simple case that I simply was too stupid to
understand correctly, so I am hoping someone smart will fill me in on
how it is to be done.  I *thought* I was following the manual, but
clearly I wasn't.

So, the scenario:

Trunk.
Tag the trunk: BEFORE_BRANCH_CREATION
Create branch named BRANCH.
Tag the trunk: AFTER_BRANCH_CREATION (yes, I'm paranoid)
Development rages along on both the trunk and the branch.  Files are
added and removed in both places.

Now it is time to merge a selective portion of the BRANCH into the trunk.
I checkout the trunk into a sandbox.
For convenience, I checkout the BRANCH into another sandbox.
> From within the trunk sandbox, I cd into dir.
Here is where I know I did something wrong: cvs update -d -jBRANCH

Let us pause for a moment.  Suppose dir on the BRANCH contains a
subdirectory named subdir, but the trunk does not.

What I *want* to happen in my dull thickheaded way is for nothing to
be removed from my current directory on the trunk, but I want new
directories and files present on the BRANCH to get pulled in.  I also
want files in my trunk sandbox to have any changes that were made to
them on the BRANCH merged in.

Shortly after this I began flailing, and wound up with something like
cvs update -d -jAFTER_BRANCH_CREATION -jBRANCH, which as I recall
pulled in new files but *removed* files in dir.

So where can I read about what I want to accomplish?

Thanks,
Laird