Using Ruby to install/manage something from source - Features?

Hi,

Since some time, as a hobby, I am working on an umbrella project
in Ruby - anything that aids in installing software. Basically
its main feature right now is to do something like this:

  compile http://dfn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/htop/htop-0.9.tar.gz

And htop will be downloaded, extracted, compiled, installed.

Ok, that's nothing breathtaking. You just have ruby download it, extract
it, compile it, and perhaps register it. Every advanced Rubyista can
write that in like less than 1 hour ... :)

The instruction:

  compile htop

Would be synonymous (but of course it has to find the URL, which
usually is stored in some yaml files, the current "database" for
this project). One can however generate standalone shell scripts
as well or generate i.e. PKGBUILD files or debian .deb packages
(though both is not completely bug free right now, I myself prefer
to use the source, so that's where my attention usually is first.)

Basic dependency management works too, somewhat.

However, the point of this mail/post actually is that I am asking
of people what they would expect of a set of scripts that help
in installing/compiling anything? I would like to check against
the current featuresets and look to extend the project.

For example, would people find a replacement for cmake or GNU
autoconfigure (and m4) in Ruby and C useful?

What would YOU expect of any "Package" manager in Ruby?

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