With "Dupliframes", you could do something like this in Blender 2.79:
The basic principle is demonstrated by the French architect Matthieu Dupont de Dinechin already in Blender 2.49 here. You can't do this with an "Array Modifier" in combination with a "Curve Deform Modifier" since the shape shall change for the instanced object on its path for which the keyframe interpolation is quite useful.
I hope that this will be possible with Geometry Nodes which I've already tried working with. But it's still confusing with all the different variables and variable definitions. For the time being I'll use Blender 2.79 if I need "Dupliframes".
