The PHP application framework (phpApp) seems to be very close to what I am attempting to build with my controller.
There is a single file download for the installer. The installer accesses archives on the central server to install the components. There is a web-based administration console to configure the controller as well as the ability to configure it manually via the file system. These developers even invented an interesting use of the serialize() and unserialize() PHP functions to build a .par (PHP Archive) file for expansion within PHP.
Unfortunately, the installer doesn’t even work. Based on the code inside of it, I guessed at what was supposed to happen in order to give you the feature list above. I think it has trouble reading the .par files. Additionally, I don’t think it was ever tested (at least not remotely) as the installer attempts to call filesize() on a remote file, which isn’t allowed. Additionally, it looks like the last file update occured on June 27th, 2001 (unless the apache server has the wrong system time).
I think there is some conspiracy here. All of the applications that seem to get close to what I want are always incomplete and unmaintained.
Well, at the very least I can steal the PHP archive file format from them. That looks like a great idea.