I think any serious infrastructure is going to need a cross-language, cross package manager entity that just lines everything up. I've run into the problem with pip on ubuntu where it puts something in the requirements file, but that thing isn't actually in pypi but was installed by apt or worse, if I generated the requirements file on my mac, macports.

I think more examples of how proper config management tools make that sort of clusterfuck manageable would go a long way towards convincing people that if you're expecting your product to have any longevity, you have to pay attention to this stuff and do it right.