使用SharePoint功能或物理文件部署jQuery？

We are about to undertake a rather large customization of SharePoint and I wanted to get some feedback prior to jumping in with both feet. One of the issues we are kicking the tires on is do we deploy the jQuery javascript library to the 12 hive directly (making it available in _layouts for each site etc.) or do we wrap it up in a feature and activate that feature for each site? I have also seen two projects on CodePlex that wrap it up in features and that could be a third option I guess.We are about to undertake a rather large custom