Do you have documentation about maintaing sets of code by versioncontrol?

I am wondering if I can use it for collaborative work on the design of a big
course in the form of an educational XML-tree.
- it must be controled by a prescriptive educational markup format (Dutch
EML/XML)
- it can describe content
- it can handle workflows (roles, tracking and views

- it must allow versioning
- it must allow merging of subsets in EML-format

A refreshing explanation what CVS NOT is would also be OK.

> rooms, shared big project rooms (maybe here with a variant of CVS? Can
> soemone give a url for a good up to date text about modern CVS?)


Eh, how did CVS get into the picture? I know quite a lot about CVS (I
have implemented the CVS pserver protocol in Squeak) and can't really
see the fit.

regards, Göran