Ah, so there are really two issues:
One if the issue of distribution, in which having everything stay together in one package directory/package file is really nice.
The other is production, in which there are other concerns. Hm. I guess the request-processor could be simplified a great deal if it could only maintain a large part of the site map as files/directories/symlinks in the file system.
Oh, well, a thought for some other day.
/Lars