branching/merging questions

[Zachary M. Smith]

Hello All,
        
        I need some help/advice on a branching problem that was introduced
into the CVS repository at my company.

        Right now, we have a branch off the trunk which I'll call Branch1.  
Off of that branch, is Branch1-1, Branch1-2, Branch1-3, and Branch1-4.
I need to bring the changes from Branch1 into the trunk and call that
"production".  Right now, what we have in Branch1 *is* our production
code, but we'd like that production code to be in the trunk and not
in a branch.  I have tried to do a merge of Branch1 into the trunk,
but I am not satisfied that I am getting what I ultimately want.  So,
my question is: Is there a way that I can make Branch1 the trunk.
Would it be possible to do a hack-merge that would essentially take
Branch1 and make it the trunk?

        Once I get Branch1 into the trunk, I'll need to create a new dev.
branch that we'll call Branch2.  Then I will need to merge Branch1-1,
Branch1-2, Branch1-3, and Branch1-4 into Branch2.  At that point,
I should be ok, but this initial merge of Branch1 into the trunk
has got me a bit worried.

        Any thoughts?

Any help is *very* appreciated.

-zach

p.s. forgive me if this a bit vague.  If you'd like more info or 
cvs output, let me know.  i'm pretty new to this, so forgive me
if this doesn't make much sense...