[amatix]

we use fpm & something like dh-virtualenv along exactly those lines. Helps us manage a complex mix of native/system-level dependencies (non-python) as well as python packages.

We also incorporate a set of meta packages which means we can have multiple codebase versions installed and switch the "active" one by installing the right version of the meta-package. There's also meta-packages for each service running off the same codebase, which deals with starting/stopping/etc.