unifying multiple files and their log messages

It occurred to me the other day that it would be useful to be
able to unify multiple files and their log messages into a single
file with Subversion. I ran the idea by a colleague, and he
agreed so here is my thought...

Occasionally one might run into a situation where they have two
or more files they would like to combine into one. Ideally the
log messages from the original files would be incorporated into
the history of the combined file, but with CVS and Subversion
that is currently not possible.

An example of how this could be useful can be made with the
access.conf, httpd.conf, and srm.conf Apache configuration files.
Assume that someone has worked on, and kept individually, the
three files for a period of time. If they decided to combine
them into a single httpd.conf the current options open to them do
not seem very elegant.

I would imagine the new unification steps would begin by someone
combining the files by hand. Simply concatenating the files or
something like that will not be sufficient in many cases. After
the files have been manually combined the user could run a unify
command and then commit their changes. How things are handled
past this point I am not sure of... What seems important to me
is the ability to represent via svn log, or whatever, the various
changes that were made to the data before it was all in one file.

Thoughts, suggestions?

-- 
Doug Porter <dsp@waterspout.com>
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