Packaging is starting to come together, but still has a ways to go. The Setuptools-Distribute merge was just announced a couple months ago, we still have 6 ways of doing things that are mostly incompatible. Packaging is mostly solved if you're on Linux, sort of solved if you're on OS X, and a horrible mess if you're on Windows. Perhaps if you can live in the world of pure Python it's good, but once you have C-based dependencies, it quickly becomes a mess. Compared to something like CRAN and the R community, it's clear Python could be improved in this area.
