A small team (to which I belong) has been working on something similar in
spirit, the Ruby Production Archive (RPA). We want to create a repository
of quality engineered packages, essentially doing all the packaging
ourselves (that is, upstream authors are not forced to adapt to the
system, we do the work for them, and can ensure higher consistency).

Please read http://www.wobblini.net/svn/rpa/rpa-base/manifesto.txt for
more information on our goals.

So far, we have developed a package management tool featuring the
following:
* sane dependency management, including deletion of 'unneeded
  dependencies' and tracking of reverse dependencies on removal
* atomic (de)installs: even during an upgrade, either the packages (and
  their dependencies) are deployed correctly, or the whole system is
  rolled back to the previous clean state. Designed to survive crashes,
  power outages (as long as your FS doesn't break), etc...
* ability to build and install Ruby extensions
* the system is generic and not restricted to Ruby libs/extensions
  only. In particular, it doesn't unpack the packages in a hidden
  directory (unlike Rubygems), and can manage files in all of the
  $prefix; no hacks are required to handle files under bin/, for
  instance.
* Ruby-specific features: unit tests are automatically run on install
  (the package will only be installed if they pass), automatic
  generation of RDoc documentation and data files for ri, etc...

(note: these represent working features, not the stuff in our TODO ;-)


The reason why very few people know RPA is that we have decided to keep
a low profile for the moment. Since RPA is more than just a package
manager (it is really a vision where the package manager is but a small
part), we haven't released the tool even though it is in pretty good
shape (especially if we compare to the other available options:
Rubygems, raa-install, etc).

We are now trying to package a number of libraries (mostly) and
applications, aiming at getting a few tens for our first release. We are
also in the process of defining the RPA Policy, which will be a key part
of RPA. This is a complex task and help would be welcome :-)

Regards,