On http://ecls.sourceforge.net/cvs.html:
# ADDRESS=anonymous at common-lisp.net:/project/ecl/cvsroot
# cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous:$ADDRESS co ecl
will hardly work with any POSIX shell, it needs to be
# export ADDRESS=anonymous at common-lisp.net:/project/ecl/cvsroot
# cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous:$ADDRESS co ecl
Leslie