Installation profiles: add module/theme search path?
Currently, there is no way to "inherit" that way between profiles. My team uses a small script that symlinks the modules directory from the base profiles into the modules dir of the subprofile, to solve this.

So the structure becomes

profiles/base-profile/modules
profiles/base-profile/modules/ctools
profiles/sub-profiles/modules/modules         &lt;-- Symlink to base-profile/modules
profiles/sub-profiles/modules/modules/ctools  &lt;-- From symlink
profiles/sub-profiles/modules/views