...Do i even have to use gpg? Or do i just have to copy the public key file
into a directory?
You just need to copy the public key file to a directory named .ssh in your $HOME on cvs.apache.org, here's what I have:
ls -l $HOME/.ssh total 2 -rw-r--r-- 1 bdelacretaz bdelacretaz 798 Jan 29 2003 authorized_keys
ls -ld $HOME/.ssh
drwxr-xr-x 2 bdelacretaz bdelacretaz 512 Jan 1 06:49 /home/bdelacretaz/.ssh
(wish you a happy new year by the way ;-) -Bertrand