when i modify a CVS file appears the orange arrow near the file name in the workspace; after the commit the arrow doesn't go away, but if I press F5 on the workspace tab it goes away

Neither workspace nor Explorer window auto-refresh its content when anything is modified outside the IDE. It may be overkilling feature for huge projects located on shared disks. Anyway, it's a known minor issue and we do care of it.

I would suggest an option (so you can disable if performance are not good) to force the refresh of the window after the execution of CVS commands; what do you think about?

Yet, CVS commands is not the only origin of changes. We need a better mechanism to track file system changes.

yes true, I would suggest the option of autorefresh after cvs commands and maybe an autorefresh each X seconds (if cvs is active). It's not optimal but I don't see any fair solution due to centralized nature of the cvs repository and the client-server implementation