CVS started out as a bunch of shell scripts written by Dick Grune, posted to comp.sources.unix in the volume 6 release of December, 1986. While no actual code from these shell scripts is present in the current version of CVS much of the CVS conflict resolution algorithms come from them. Jeff Polk later helped Brian with the design of the CVS module and vendor branch support. There is a mailing list for CVS where bug reports can be sent, questions can be asked, an FAQ is posted, and discussion about future enhancements to CVS take place. Please be specific about your email address.
Work is in progress on creating a newsgroup for CVS-related topics.
Gateways to and from the mailing list will be set up. CVS can do a lot of things for you, but it does not try to be everything for everyone. CVS is not a build system. CVS does not dictate how you build anything. It merely stores files for retrieval in a tree structure you devise.