On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 22:20, Steven Watanabe <watanabesj@gmail.com> wrote:
If you will recall, the question I started out with
is: "What about a distributed version control system
makes merging easier?"  That question remains unanswered.

Hi!

Sorry to interrupt, but I just googled this question (in fact directly used keywords in stackoverflow) and got this question/answer that might (or might not) clarify the "why" : 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/43995/why-is-branching-and-merging-easier-in-mercurial-than-in-subversion

Basically : 

"The hassle in CVS/SVN comes from the fact that these systems do not remember the parenthood of changes. In Git and Mercurial, not only can a commit have multiple children, it can also have multiple parents!"
A full explaination is done in the (validated) answer.

However it might be that there are other reasons helping the merges, but I guess this answer describe the main differencies between CVS/SVN and Mercurial/Git on the merge point.

Hope it helps.

Joël Lamotte.