Thanks Ben, and Cyril. I liked Mariano's approach, and I will play with that. However, I think the suggestion about using Moose may be exactly what I need.
I have been playing with Mathematica a lot lately, and I really appreciated the fact that you got the kitchen sink with it. What I was wondering - taking Cyril's comment into account - is whether there is an argument for producing a kitchen sink image which contains the stable versions of all the key tools. Obviously, that requires some discussion/analysis of what the key tools are, but it shouldn't be impossible to do. In the meantime, I am off to play with Moose :-) Cheers Andy