I downloaded and compiled the cvs-1.12.13.tar.gz file.
used gcc (Ubuntu 4.3.2-1ubuntu12) 4.3.2

Then when I (or via redmine/cvs) use the cvs rls command I got a lot of :
* %n in writable segment detected *
Terminated with fatal signal 11

I did a simple grep "%n" -R * and found something in the file lib/vasnprintf.c

more google/browsing found

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/commit/lib/vasnprintf.c?id=913c09becd9df89dbd9b9f386e7f35c240d5efe8

did a minimal change in lib/vasnprintf.c

# if !(_GLIBC_ > 2 || (_GLIBC_ == 2 && _GLIBC_MINOR_ >= 3))
p[1] = '%';
p[2] = 'n';
p[3] = '\0';
#else

/* On glibc2 systems from glibc >= 2.3 - probably also older
   ones - we know that snprintf's returns value conforms to
   ISO C 99: the gl_SNPRINTF_DIRECTIVE_N test passes.
   Therefore we can avoid using %n in this situation.
   On glibc2 systems from 2004-10-18 or newer, the use of %n
   in format strings in writable memory may crash the program
   (if compiled with _FORTIFY_SOURCE=2), so we should avoid it
   in this situation.  */
p[1] = '\0';
#endif

and now it works!

I also found the bug #29199 which may apply to this.