I believe the format/DSL of Homebrew would be excellent for this purpose. In a certain sense, you could actually use it as is: take the formulas you want, add specific configuration, and deployment is just cloning your repository and running install for all your formulas.
Each installation runs in a couple of steps, each of which has a default but can also be configured individually. It has lots of helpers for adding/replacing in configuration files, for testing, for temporary files and cleanup, for patching, and for specifying options. It’s got dependency management built in, etc.
And if (when!) you need more flexibility, you don’t have to learn about the insanity that is a for-loop in YAML, but can use a language that you either already know or should have no trouble understanding, ruby.
Each installation runs in a couple of steps, each of which has a default but can also be configured individually. It has lots of helpers for adding/replacing in configuration files, for testing, for temporary files and cleanup, for patching, and for specifying options. It’s got dependency management built in, etc.
And if (when!) you need more flexibility, you don’t have to learn about the insanity that is a for-loop in YAML, but can use a language that you either already know or should have no trouble understanding, ruby.