In the context of ITER's CODAC Core System (RHEL+EPICS+ITER-tools), all support modules (e.g. Base, Asyn, Stream, locally developed drivers) are packaged; in this case as RPMs, naturally, containing shared libraries.
Any application module will also generate RPMs: one RPM per IOC. Such an IOC package contains the IOC binary as well as the st.cmd and all DBD and DB files it uses, including the snippets necessary to start the IOC as a system service. The RPM has proper dependency settings to the exact versions of the driver and support packages it needs, as well as to the services that have to run locally (logging server, CA Repeater etc.).
Installing an IOC package on a host pulls all other packages the IOC needs to run, and adds the IOC to the system services.
Activation of the IOC as system service and actually starting it as part of the package install are done based on a is-a-target-system flag that is one of the host settings.
You can set up a blank minimal system with a connection to our ITER RPM repository, and installing that single IOC package will bootstrap the machine to run the IOC.
Remote management of such installations using Ansible is being considered.
Cheers,
~Ralph
