Is this problem not solved by virtual environments or chrooting ? Potentially a simple wrapper script could be created around chroot that only installs the programs you need.

Chrooting loses global configuration files and libraries and tools that you have installed. This has a similar effect, is not as strong, but is simpler.

Ah yes, good point. Although I am sure you could sort it all out in some kind of wrapper script. Although it's not that simple then.