Hi Maris, I'm not suggesting using apt - just thinking about the difference in models. I suppose the pure python equivalent of apt and its repositories would be to have your own private PyPi (the respository), and using easy_install to install things from there onto individual machines. This does not necessitate more work: installing and updating packages on individual machines _from_ this central repository can also be automated. For example by running a script in cron every night or so. This gives you a set of _released_ packages (those in the repository), and different machines where instances of packages are _installed_. I suppose there is a correlation between what Philip calls an environment in this sense, and a machine in the debian/apt world. An environment is just a more abstract way of looking at it allowing more flexibility. Also, I tend to package everything as an egg - applications also. Eggs are just a way to package software to me, not libraries? -i