I often skip all that and use native packages with pyinstall, dh_python, and dh_virtualenv (from spotify) For me its much cleaner and controlled than distutils

I often skip all that and use native packages with pyinstall, dh_python, and dh_virtualenv (from spotify) For me its much cleaner and controlled than distutils plus the knowledge is largely transferable to other stacks. I wrap our node, java, and ruby applications using the same tooling as well as any services we depend on. (kafka, kibana, spark, etc) After that I can pass off making images, containers, installing, managing stuff, whatever onto anybody in IT or operations that knows linux. Obviously that wouldn't work well for everybody but it sure beats trying to manage 20 different ways to do everything in my case.