The problem is that Ruby doesn't solve the package problem either. Gem and Bundler are a mess, and using something like rvm or rbenv to fix this is an even bigg

The problem is that Ruby doesn't solve the package problem either. Gem and Bundler are a mess, and using something like rvm or rbenv to fix this is an even bigger mess (although it works). If you really want to see something a bit different you'd have to look at npm and node which really buck the system by installing everything locally by default. The ability for different versions of the same dependency at different points in the tree is also pretty amazing. This is the direction that composer is going with it's included autoloader and similar package syntax. If anything composer may go even one step farther by forcing you to document your dependencies in a manifest instead of allowing you to specify an individual installation via the install command.