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Since I learned that OCI images are pretty much archives with metadata, I've been thinking about applying that to other stuff.

Like, it would be cool to have all my python virtualenvs saved in bundles so they could be reused by other others, without all the container bloat.

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OCI is starting to be used for more non-container things like your describing actually. One example I'm aware of is the Helm tool in Kubernetes, which has support for using OCI as a method of storing/transporting helm charts (which are effectively just tarballs of Go templates/yaml). I

I think your challenge for virtualenvs would be that virtualenvs generally are not relocatable, as they hardcode absolute paths within the generated scripts (eg: venv/bin/activate`).

Sounds like a Java jar/war file...

And apk, deb, rpm, whl, msi. Virtually all packaging formats come down to "archive plus metadata."

Yes, though narrowed down to "packaging for a python virtual environment" draws closer to jar/war.

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