This solution is used in Microsoft Windows operating systems since Windows Vista, where the Global Assembly Cache is an implementation of such a central registry with associated services and integrated with the installation system/package manager.
PC-BSD, up to and including version 8.2, a predecessor of TrueOS (an operating system based on FreeBSD) avoids dependency hell by placing packages and dependencies into self-contained directories in /Programs, which avoids breakage if system libraries are upgraded or changed.