How to merge a complicated mess

[Harry Putnam]

I've been using merc now for good while but never in any complex sort
of way... Just homeboy stuff.

One small but complicated part of this is that I've been socking away
snippets of information as I learn more about my several OS's for a
number of years. Starting somewhere in late 90's

I started keeping my snippets files under cvs long ago and more
recently under merc. (about the last 2-3yrs)

Some of my snippets files have many thousands of lines... the largest
being one called `misc-snp' at 15,188 lines.  I have developed a
number of more specialized snippets files over the years so the
misc-snp file doesn't get as much action.

The whole collection of snippet files is some 41,000+ lines in about
7-8 different files.

The problem is that once I quit using CVS and started using merc.  I
kept them on several different hosts so that each hosts' set of snippet
files might have grown in slightly different ways.  With different
snippets getting stored as things went along.

Until by now the files contain quite a lot of different stuff.  And
what is the same may not be in the same order.

I've kept the bits of information in this format.

  Keywords: some key words about this bit of info
      keydate (when the snippet got saved)
  body
  body
  [...]
  &&

All snippets are in that format...

So, cutting to the chase:  How would I go about merging the various
(same name but different host and partially different content) files

I'm not well versed in diffing and patching but it seems that because
some of the snippets may have the same infomation but in different
locations... that a diff would not catch things like that...

And at this point there are 6 hosts that have many of the same named
file but nearly all will have mostly the same content but with
different content too.

All I can think of is having to do it all by hand which sounds like a
lot of time and effort.  And maybe not worth it

If I did manage to get the files merged, I guess, then I would want to
have a master repo for such files where files would be checked out and
re committed with any changes from whatever host.

That would be on the cvs model... Is that something people do with merc?