"non central" package management

[Miki Tebeka]

Greetings,

The usual package mangers (easy_install, pip ...) install packages in one central location.

I'm looking for a solution that will allow every project (which run on the same machine) use it's own packages and versions of packages. (Context - we're running several applications on the same machine, and can't test *everything* when we update a package. Also these applications might ship to other machines to run - via hadoop streaming).

I can see two options:
1. Use a different virtual env for every package (and will need activate the right one for every package).
2. Have a "lib" directory in each application with versioned packages (we use something like that with svn:externals for version management).
3. Write my own package manager.

Anyone had the same problem? Any known solutions?

Thanks,
--
Miki