[Mailman-Developers] offtopic: CVS checkout to `pwd`

This is a question about CVS.

I'm constantly creating a directory that I want Mailman to go into, for example /local/src/mailman-pristine, and then realizing that I can't make CVS actually put Mailman *into* that directory. I have to use "checkout mailman" to get it, and that insists on creating a 'mailman' directory. If I move everything from mailman to ./, things work just fine from then on, but isn't there any way to make the checkout command use the current dir?

The obvious option, "checkout -d <dir>", gives me an error if I use '.' or an absolute pathname:

protocol error: is not absolute

Can anyone else do this, or is this just part of Life with CVS?