It occurred to me that Huub wrote in gmane.os.netbsd.general:
>> export CVSROOT=':pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.netbsd.org:/cvsroot'
> Ok. New problem:
>
> bash-3.00# ./checkoutpkgsrc
> ./checkoutpkgsrc: line 2: export: 
> `:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.be.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot': not a valid identifier
> cvs checkout: No CVSROOT specified!  Please use the `-d' option
> cvs [checkout aborted]: or set the CVSROOT environment variable.
>
> When looking at the anoncvs link, I suspect :pserver isn't quite correct?

I doubt it. The error is from export, indicating that you probably used
a space between CVSROOT and the value it's going to get. The second 
error is from cvs, indicating that when it looked, the variable CVSROOT
was empty - but that's because export failed.

Maybe you should quote your script. In case you changed the 'setenv' of your 
first attempt to 'export': Note the =. The semantics of 'export' and 'setenv'
are rather different.