I just came across Drush, a drupal command line utility. Sounds like something I should’ve checked into a long time ago. At least I do use the shell for a good amount of my work, but it looks like Drush could even further speed things up for me.
Take a look at this video from Development Seed (More Beer, Less Effort), which shows two users simultaneously installing a bunch of drupal modules:
Drush: More Beer, Less Effort from Development Seed on Vimeo.