Whether you love CVS or hate it you are probably going to have to use it at some point. I always find one of the most difficult things to do is get your files into it in the first place or in other words create a module. I suppose it is simple for people that do this everyday but for us mere mortals it is a difficult thing to do.
Doing it With Netbeans
Importing
First thing you have to do is import your code. This is done using the dialog found by following the menu Versioning --> CVS --> Global CVS Import....
Once you have the dialog open fill in the boxes. If you want to use CVS over SSH (you do) you need to have the SSH Agent running to handle your passwords. The biggest gotcha is that the log message, vendor and release strings aren't automatically quoted (whoever wrote that bit of code should be shot) and entering a space in any of those strings will case CVS to die quitely without a useful error message. It goes without saying that you have to have the command line CVS client installed and SSH as well as being able to access the server you want to use.
Checking Out
You would think this would be a simple affair. We'll be having none of that aroudn here. The first problem is deciding where you want to check stuff out and what you want to checkout. To the hours of joy I have had with this. You have to nominate a workign directory that is one level above the level you want to use. I normally create a development directory in the root of my account and use that as my working directory. When you come to check something out select this directory as your working directory and then enter the name of the module you want to check out.