It is due to my lack of knowledge and the inflexibility of cvs that I asked my questions in the first place. The idea is not to find the one and only one valid way but to understand the trade-offs involved in the various alternatives.

For instance moving all target, intermediate and scratch directories up out of the CVS tree simplifies versioning. But would that create a bad first impression by over flowing its expected namespace when folk create a workspace? I suspect so.

I restructured my project not long ago. Having learned a bit the hard way I am looking at doing it again now. I'd like to learn a bit the medium way.

Now I have hundreds of files. When I have lots more will it still be as easy to restructure my repository? Should I not be concerned to plan ahead?

Did I misunderstand the docs? .cvsignore files only effect the user's workspace, not everyones view of the repository.

I don't find your responses too satisfying -- they seem to reflect an offhand attitude to the subject. I realize this could come from vast experience and great knowledge of version control systems but your posts don't impart enough to me to know this.

Thank you again for your kindness in trying to help.