The hardest aspect of software development is keeping your systems configured properly. Installing tools like rvm, govm, virtualenv and so on is pretty simple but once you’ve installed the base packages there are any number of dependencies that you have to deal with and getting a consistant install is no less difficult or tedious than TDD (test driven development).

I had a strategy once that included using a VMWare instance that I would use to build a base-line configuration for the target project. Then share that baseline with others on the team. This strategy came to me after years of dependency documents, repository sub-projects, storing dependencies in the project tree, and even dedicated target build/test machines which is the closest to the VM strategy.

I think it would be ideal if there were a script or program (and it might already exist) that would reverse engineer your current dependency list; installed gems or pips etc… and generate an install script that would would work cooperatively with your rvm or virtualenv so that you or a team member could re-build the dev/staging/production environment from scratch as easily as possible.