Eggs, VirtualEnv, and Apt - best practices?

[Dmitry S. Makovey]

Diez B. Roggisch wrote:

>   - different OS. I for one don't know about a package management tool
> for windows. And while our servers use Linux (and I as developer as
> well), all the rest of our people use windows. No use telling them to
> apt-get instal python-imaging.

that is a very valid point, but it seemed that Scott has homogeneous
environment: Debian/Ubuntu so my post was relative to the original request.
I agree that when you throw Windows/MacOS into the mix things
become "interesting". But then it's better when your developers develop on
server/platform they are going to be using, using same stack they going to
face in production etc. It all depends on requirements and current
practices in company. 

>   - keeping track of recent developments. In the Python webframework
> world for example (which the OP seems to be working with), things move
> fast. Or extremly slow, regarding releases. Take Django - until 2 month
> ago, there hasn't been a stable release for *years*. Virtually everybody
> was working with trunk. And given the rather strict packaging policies
> of debian and consorts, you'd be cut off of recent developments as well
> as of bugfixes.

that definitely becomes tricky however not impossible to track. You do need
a common snapshot for all developers to use anyway - so why not just
package it up?

Note: I do agree that depending on environment/development
practices/policies/etc my statement might become invalid or useless.
However when you're dealing with homogeneous environment or you require
development and testing to be done on your servers running targeted
application stack - things become much easier to manage :)