I think I may have stumbled upon the answer. I’m so set in my CVS ways that I though the best thing was to branch the entire top level folder – recursively. What I really was after was a way of setting the configspec on the NEW view I create for the new branch, and making it show code that is labeled with a particcular label, then when it is checked out and in, a new revision exists on the new branch. The advantage here, is that my new view shows exactly what I need without the need for checking out a version of every file in that view.

This post over at the IBM Rational Clearcase forums describes EXACTLY what I was after, and explained it in the precise terms I needed. I’m thinking differently now, and if it works as I intend, then I shall write further about this adventure into SCM.