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I'd love to see integrated package management and versioning handled by the OS in such a way that each independent language community wouldn't have to reinvent a new distribution channel. Something like Ruby's Bundler or .NET's GAC+Nuget or "App Stores for Libraries" at the OS/vendor level.

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Like Linux distributions have done since 1997? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_management_system>

Am I misunderstanding you?

Like apt/yum, but with multiple sandboxed versions and installable in users' home directories.

Rather earlier than 1997, though full dependency resolution and such came around then (I actually thought it was earlier). APT in particular saw its first release in 1998. It was built as a front-end to the earlier dpkg (anyone else remember dselect?), released in 1994.

Ian Murdoch's observation on package management advances driven by Linux, and Debian in particular, are on mark (from the Wikipedia article).

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