*    For what it's worth, I have a shell script suite which takes, as input,
    *    the output of the nightly CVS run, and generates a list of files to
    *    retrieve via anonymous FTP.
    * 
    * That is a *very* bad idea.  Do *not* do it.  Should the CVS update
    * happen to be aborted for any reason, you will miss some of the files
    * that have been updated.

   Do you mean if the CVS update is not posted that I will miss some of the
   files?

No; that's not what I wrote.

   If the transfer fails (I check the transfer by seeing what's there and
   diffing it against what is *supposed* to be there), I just restart it.

That's not what I wrote, either.

I wrote, `Should the CVS update happen to be aborted for any reason,
[...]'.