Regarding 1, if you build your binaries with no dependencies on ros libraries they will run anywhere that does have compatible non-ros libraries that they are dependent on and same architecture like mentioned by @joq.
Unless you have multiple non-ros dependent catkin packages you want catkin to find for you, find_package(catkin...) would be empty, you wouldn't need to put ${catkin_LIBRARIES} in the target_link_libraries, and you would find your other libs with standard cmake find_packages. And of course you couldn't use rosrun to launch the binaries on the other machine, just run the /path/to/binary directly.
For 2, the build farm http://wiki.ros.org/buildfarm is supposed to provide capabilities for custom building (and distribution?). There is likely a lot more learning curve than catkin_make install + copy binaries.
The ROS build farm is also designed to
enable deploying a custom build farm.
This can be useful to release
closed-source packages, build for
platforms and architectures not
provided by the official ROS build
farm, and/or customize any part of the
process to specific needs.
I haven't done this (and it would be fantastic to see tutorials or any more information from anyone who has) but I hope the end stage is that machine B would add a local private server to the deb repositories and then be able to apt-get a binary down into /opt/ros.
There was a presentation at roscon 2015: http://roscon.ros.org/2015/presentati... and https://vimeo.com/142150815
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