Best way to merge two repos with same content, different history

Hi all,
	We're converting out of CVS after 10 years... The cvs2git
conversion takes around 4-5 days, and there doesn't seem to be any way
to speed that up.  So, our current plan is to take the tip of the
branches that we need for the next week, and import each of those
branches into its own clean git repo (top-skim).  Then we'll work out of
those repos while the conversion is in process (presumably creating
branches in those repos as needed).  Once the conversion is finished,
we'll need to get all the work done in the top-skimmed repos merged into
the converted repo so that we end up with little to no developer down
time, and all of our history, pre and post conversion in one repo.
	I'm testing all of this in advance, of course, and the tricky
part at the moment is how to "stitch" the commits from the top-skim
repos back onto the converted repo when the conversion is done.  The
file content of the initial commit for the skimmed repo is identical to
the last commit for the respective branch in the converted repo, but the
SHA1s are different, presumably because the history of the content is
different.

	Stated another way, I have two repositories, "new" and "old",
where the files in the initial commit on branch "B1" in "new" have
exactly the same content as the last commit on branch "B1" in "old".
There also exist various branches in "new" based on "B1".  I'd like to
merge all the commits from "new" into "old", but the SHA1s are
different, presumably because the history leading up to those points are
different.

	Other than using manually format-patch on every branch in new,
then applying the patches (presumably with regular old patch, since the
ancestor commit IDs won't match), is there any "good" way to merge "new"
into "old"?

Thanks,	


--

Kelly F. Hickel
Senior Product Architect
MQSoftware, Inc.
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