I'm currently working on a software project of mine, and it is something that I aim to be able to take commercial in the future - probably in a year or so once I've returned from my year in Japan. Due to licensing fees I've decided to go against QT, and instead focus my efforts on using gtk (specifically gtkmm and glademm, and I must say I'm impressed!)

My only concern is quite how I can distribute this whilst maintaining the source. Although I may release the source eventually (I do love the OSS movement) I want to leave my options for now.

Some packages such as open office or the Java SDK can be downloaded as a .bin file, which installs everything instantly. Is there a technique for making these types of files, or are they effectively just shell scripts that copy pre compiled binaries into the correct locations?

I have also thought about the use of RPM's, since they are relatively easy to package and distribute.

If anyone knows of any effective techniques for distributing linux binaries reliably (and which work across as many distributions as possible) then please let me know =)

The major problems with binary installers like jre and OO.o is that they don't play well with the Package Manager of distro maintainer's choice. That said, if you make sure you release in RPM, DEB, and Slackware TGZ, you've got most distros covered, and Slackware TGZ easy to deal with for fringe distros. Gentoo and Arch are more popular distros that don't use those PMs, packaging for them may be worthwhile.

Would the source have to be included with those though? Can I create a .tgz that does not hold the source code itself?

The same problem is with Gentoo. I use it myself, and although ebuilds are fairly easy to make, doesn't portage work by downloading the file and then actually compiling and installing? I need to skip the compiling stage

RPMs, DEBs, and Slackware TGZ are all binary-only packages, so you do not have to bundle to source with, unless you are making special source packages that build themselves when they install, like gentoo. For gentoo, you could probably get away with not having to bundle the source by having a dummy ./configure and make, with everything happening in make install