Most people should use stable LessTif releases. People with specific problems that have just been fixed should use lesstif-current. The CVS repository won't do very much good for very many people (other than the developers.) If you are still convinced you need to pull source out of CVS, continue on. If not, you might want to go to the download page. On the other hand, we need people to test the current sources, so if you are up to it, go ahead. Usually, lesstif-current is current enough, though.

To access cvs, first set CVSROOT to :pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.hungry.com:/cvsroot. How you do this depends on your shell. If you use the bourne shell, you can type CVSROOT=:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.hungry.com:/cvsroot ; export CVSROOT. If you use csh, you will have to use the setenv command. After that, you have to login. You do this by typing cvs login. When prompted, enter anoncvs as the password. After that, you can type cvs checkout lesstif to retrieve the sources for the first time. To update them, cd into the LessTif directory CVS created and type cvs update

Please don't use any special CVS options, such as compression, when checking out the LessTif source. Doing so will bog down the server.

To build LessTif from a CVS checkout you will also need libtool, automake and autoconf. All three are available from your friendly neighbourhood GNU mirror. Once you have the lesstif module checked out, and the GNU tools set up, you will need to go to the top directory in the LessTif tree and type:
autoheader && automake -i && autoconf
in order to create the configure script. Once this is done you are ready to carry on to configuring LessTif, as described in the INSTALL file of the distribution.

One final remark: once you have a checked out CVS distribution, cvs update will get you up to date. However, when a directory is added, like the recent addition of lib/Xlt, cvs update alone is not sufficient. You should periodically run cvs update -d from the top of the tree to get any new directories and thier contents.