Setting Your Repository
CVS records everyone's changes to a given project in a directory tree called a repository. Before you can use CVS, you need to set the CVSROOT environment variable to the repository's path. Whoever is in charge of your project's configuration management will know what this is; perhaps they've made a global definition for CVSROOT somewhere.
In any case, on our system, the CVS repository is /u/src/master. In that case, you would need to enter the commands
setenv CVSROOT /u/src/master if your shell is csh or one of its descendents, or CVSROOT=/u/src/master export CVSROOT
if your shell is Bash or some other Bourne shell variant. If you forget to do this, CVS will complain when you try to use it:
$ cvs checkout httpc cvs checkout: No CVSROOT specified! Please use the -d option cvs [checkout aborted]: or set the CVSROOT environment variable. $