...

therefore CVS won't even attempt merges.

Can't say I care. The checkin msg showed a teensy context diff, and I couldn't measure the time difference between CVS applying a patch or replacing the file.

I agree, but I didn't mean that. I meant when there are local changes and changes in the CVS repository, for text files CVS attempts to merge those changes, but for binaries it simply moves the local file aside and checks out a fresh copy. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)