"John S. J. Anderson" <jacobs(a)xemacs.org> writes:
 I, however, did _not_ have it set, not in the XEmacs process's
 environment. Properly setting it gives me the 'hanging CVS' behavior
 described by Adrian.
 
 Can anyone confirm that using ssh-askphrase bypasses the problem? 
Not for pcl-cvs but I have the same situation with gnus (I need ssh in
my gnus-select-method to post news). When I haven't added the
appropriate ssh identity to my ssh-agent then gnus hangs without any
error message or prompt. If I have run ssh-add it all works perfectly.
  Gunnar