To be able to build from cvs you will need
the whole autotools suite + gettext.

run ./autogen.sh
run configure --enable-maintainer-mode

Now you are set (run make, make install or whatever).

I had problems to generate in doc/ because of tex / etex
conflicts.

If this happens to you, try to set your environment variable TEX,
for example:

TEX=tex
export TEX