Packaging has always been a bit of a sore spot for Python modules. Maybe wheels are going in the rant direction. Armin Ronacher has written a nice overview of how to put wheels into actual useful practice:
Wheels currently seem to have more traction than eggs. The development is more active, PyPI started to add support for them and because all the tools start to work for them it seems to be the better solution. Eggs currently only work if you use easy_install instead of pip which seems to be something very few people still do.
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So there you have it. Python on wheels. It’s there, it kinda works, and it’s probably worth your time.