I second BrowserUk's suggestion. I've built a system built on CVS to manage code distribution on a number of systems, and it works well. I didn't build modules like absolut.todd suggests, we just have a directory hierarchy that we check out as necessary.

Basically, it works like this:

Each morning, the computers compare CUR_PROD_VERSION.sh with their local stored copy. If it's different, they check out CUR_PROD_VERSION.sh, which is a trivial shell script that checks out the latest production version (using a tag).

...roboticus