Python gets CPAN

Phillip J. Eby has put together a set of extensions to distutils called setuptools. One of the included scripts, easy_install.py is a shot at duplicating CPAN/apt-get and other package management tools.

setuptools also works with Python Eggs, a package format that extends the distutils format.

Although I haven't tried to package anything as an Egg yet I have tried the setuptools package (which incidentally comes with a bootstrap script that downloads and installs the package automatically). Everything ran straight out of the box and I was able to install and upgrade several packages already installed on my system very easily. Great work! This is something Python has sorely needed for a while.