[tex-live] Distributing Customised TeX Live

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

I'm not certain if this is OT so apologies if this is the incorrect list to
ask this on.  

I maintain a shared central TeX system for a group of academics who are
almost all using Windows.  This works pretty well all round.  We just have
to add 

	s:\texlive\bin\win32\

to each of their paths and get Ghostscript/view into place separately.  

I've just installed the new TeX Live system from scratch and have added our
own various fonts and packages to the texmf-local tree.  It's moreorless
finished but I'm faced with an issue which is a bit of a hassle.  I don't
want to have to redo this on everyone's laptop too.  The custom stuff can
be quite time consuming.

What is the most sensible way to mirror the above system to laptops?  Is it
good enough just to use scp, unison, rsync etc into progra~1/ or will the
install process set things up notably better?  I know for example that it
places a few links in the start menu on Windows though they appear to only
be for admin tasks like running mktexlsr.

Is there a document somewhere detailing the best way to do this?  Would
there be many pitfalls in just using rsync or unison?

Gavin