I think you have good points about the file signature and key-verification. I was hoping that we could expand the conversation around static analysis of library functionality as some languages offer features to simplify certain kinds of static analysis. For instance, Rust's borrowing semantics are a language feature that make certain memory usage attributes possible to verify statically.

From a run-time perspective, there are lots of instances where untrusted code has to be executed and there are various sandboxing related approaches there (running in a walled off-VM for instance). From a deployment standpoint that doesn't scale if you need to have an actual VMware instance running per package/dependency. My hope is that a language implemented over a virtual machine might be able to achieve similar levels of security with less overhead.

>a language implemented over a virtual machine might be able to achieve similar levels of security with less overhead

So ... anything running on the JVM (Java, Scala, etc), for example?