You only need to do this once, by using the 'cvs admin' command. This sets the file to not expand keywords when checked out. It only needs to be set once, instead of with every checkout command.

This alleviates having to make a wrapper script, or putting it into .cvsrc, either of which really mean you have to decide to expand keywords (or not) globally. Setting it via 'cvs admin' means you can decide file by file, which is often much more correct for the contents of your repository.