If it is acceptable to you that you don't do the comparison of the before/after state by comparing the disk images, you could use any of the many disk image tools that have already been mentioned to make the disk images, and use PC Magazine's InCtrl5 utility (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,25475,00.asp) to generate the report of what changed during an installation.
From reading your request, it seem that InCtrl5 will give you a report of all the changes you are asking about. It just goes about it differently than the way you are asking. Read their description of InCtrl5 and see for yourself whether it gives you what you want. The source is included, so you can study the code to see exactly what it is doing, should you want to check into it in detail. It is NOT open source, though, so if your plan is to make something you can distribute, using InCtrl5 probably isn't suitable for that. I don't know whether the source included is enough for you to make modifications and rebuild purely for your own use. (I think their license doesn't permit even that, but I doubt they would make a fuss about that, even if they could tell you did so.)
It might not be the answer you are looking for, but it seems to me it is worth your time to take a few minutes to check into it.
The Agile programming folks (Extreme Programming, etc.) say that the whole project team should sit together in one room so that barriers to communication are minimal. So a group that is going to use those development methods shouldn't have individual offices. I've never had the opportunity to work on a project that used an Agile approach, so I don't know whether the approach really delivers the benefits the advocates promise, but apparently they have many real-world examples of successes.
It might be that having individual offices is a good idea for projects using the more traditional development methods, but if the Agile methods really do provide better results, it could be that having individual offices won't be important in the future, as the Agile methods become widely adopted. On the other hand, if the people are really working on independent things (not working as a team on a single project), then probably nothing about the Agile techniques are relevant and individual offices might provide the best productivity.
So, as usual, the best approach depends on the circumstances.
SPSS (statistical package for social sciences) is still in use and being maintained. I know it goes back something more than 30 years, to the late 60's.
Some of the structural analysis programs from the late 60's (STRESS, STRUDL, ICES) might still be around, too, but I haven't encountered any of them recently.
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If it is acceptable to you that you don't do the comparison of the before/after state by comparing the disk images, you could use any of the many disk image tools that have already been mentioned to make the disk images, and use PC Magazine's InCtrl5 utility (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,25475,00.asp) to generate the report of what changed during an installation.
From reading your request, it seem that InCtrl5 will give you a report of all the changes you are asking about. It just goes about it differently than the way you are asking. Read their description of InCtrl5 and see for yourself whether it gives you what you want. The source is included, so you can study the code to see exactly what it is doing, should you want to check into it in detail. It is NOT open source, though, so if your plan is to make something you can distribute, using InCtrl5 probably isn't suitable for that. I don't know whether the source included is enough for you to make modifications and rebuild purely for your own use. (I think their license doesn't permit even that, but I doubt they would make a fuss about that, even if they could tell you did so.)
It might not be the answer you are looking for, but it seems to me it is worth your time to take a few minutes to check into it.
The Agile programming folks (Extreme Programming, etc.) say that the whole project team should sit together in one room so that barriers to communication are minimal. So a group that is going to use those development methods shouldn't have individual offices. I've never had the opportunity to work on a project that used an Agile approach, so I don't know whether the approach really delivers the benefits the advocates promise, but apparently they have many real-world examples of successes.
It might be that having individual offices is a good idea for projects using the more traditional development methods, but if the Agile methods really do provide better results, it could be that having individual offices won't be important in the future, as the Agile methods become widely adopted. On the other hand, if the people are really working on independent things (not working as a team on a single project), then probably nothing about the Agile techniques are relevant and individual offices might provide the best productivity.
So, as usual, the best approach depends on the circumstances.
SPSS (statistical package for social sciences) is still in use and being maintained. I know it goes back something more than 30 years, to the late 60's. Some of the structural analysis programs from the late 60's (STRESS, STRUDL, ICES) might still be around, too, but I haven't encountered any of them recently.