Alex Clemesha wrote a blog post back in 2009 that points to 3 elements of the Python ecosystem that I’ve made part of my toolbox that if you haven’t read, is worth a read: “Tools of the Modern Python Hacker: Virtualenv, Fabric and Pip”. I’m pretty sure that without these 3 (and Jenkins/Hudson), recent projects of mine would have been far more complicated to accomplish with teams that have been variable in size from day to day. They reduce complexity, and like Maven on the Java side, I wouldn’t want to do a project in Python without them now.