Too small permanent file space to co a project

[Gerard Cats]

I am looking for help on the following problem:

I want to use cvs on a system where the disk allocation on $HOME is too 
small to check out a project.
So I am forced to check out on scratch space. I do not want to edit my files 
there, because I may lose
my work when scratch is cleaned. A possibility is to run "cvs co <list of 
files>" in (a subdirectory)
of $HOME, edit the files, and then, in stead of just "gmake", run a script 
that
1) checks out the full project (of the proper branch, tag, etc) on scratch
2) transfers the modified files to that project
3) runs gmake on that project

Will this work?
Are there things I have to be concerned about, e.g. the administration files 
in the CVS directories?

Thanks.