Via this link, I found a VERY useful command that I was not aware of for CVS. Basically it creates a distribution ready package from a given CVS tag (i.e. removes the CVS directories, attic files, and file changes betwen current and the tag.)
user@localhost$ cvs export -r foo-1_0 -d foo-1.0 foo
user@localhost$ tar czf foo-1.0.tar.gz foo-1.0
The first command is the interesting one (the second command simply makes your tar.gz package.) The command is run after you have correctly done a cvs login.