Just a heads-up: http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall I would like to encourage package authors to try using EasyInstall to download and build the packages they distribute, and to let me know if they encounter any issues. I'd like to make EasyInstall able to build as many Python packages "out of the box" as possible. I've also been updating the Python Eggs documentation: http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/PythonEggs But there is still a fair amount to write about the runtime API, and as you can see from the "Implementation Status" there are plenty of tasks still "available" with respect to getting the zip-based runtime as robust as it should be.