How about a platform centered around Linux containers (or maybe one of several OS containers or VM images), as the repository image?
I'm not saying the work is zero now, but maybe we can get there. If a researcher is developing on a platform where their repository is expressed as a container-like image, then they should be able to publish it for anyone to run exactly as-is. The container repo includes the data, the operating system, and any languages and libraries, with an init system that optionally builds the results.
Yes, I think we need to go in this direction. The problem is that the container system is yet another tool for researchers to learn. The first step is to get everyone using VCS and nightly testing. Many are still at the point of clumsily written, old Fortran code that gets emailed around and exists in N different variants. (Not that there is anything wrong with Fortran.) Many are at the point where if you email them a link to a git repo to clone, they're clueless about what to do.
It would help if Git didn't have such an awful learning curve (and I say this as a git user that already went through it).
I know researchers that used Subversion when it was on the rise, but they just abandoned version control altogether when Git became the generally preferred option.
I'm not saying the work is zero now, but maybe we can get there. If a researcher is developing on a platform where their repository is expressed as a container-like image, then they should be able to publish it for anyone to run exactly as-is. The container repo includes the data, the operating system, and any languages and libraries, with an init system that optionally builds the results.