Python bdist and distribute packages for install without PyPi

I'm developing a system that itself is not terribly complex: just a virtualenv with a collection of packages, each with their own dependencies. All told (with dependencies), about 30 packages need to be installed.

The following constraints complicate the setup somewhat:

• The internet is not guaranteed to be accessible. In fact we assume that PyPI is unavailable at the time of install. (A non-network debian stable repository is available, which allows for virtualenv and company)
• Some of the packages/dependencies have C extensions which are essential to the performance of the application.
• It is desired that the C extentions be compiled in advance to avoid installation of GCC and company.

Within these constraints, what is the fastest, the easiest or even (preferably) the 'right' way to package (and then install) the python module dependencies? Do I just grab the source for each package and bdist it myself?

This questions is a bit old, but in any case, since pip version 1.4 (2013-07-23), wheel has been supported as a binary distribution format with a richer interface and better support. For those finding this thread, consider using wheel instead of egg.

Example usage (from the wheel documentation):

To build wheels for your requirements and all their dependencies to a local directory:

pip install wheel
pip wheel --wheel-dir=/local/wheels -r requirements.txt

And then to install those requirements just using your local directory of wheels (and not from PyPI):

pip install --no-index --find-links=/local/wheels -r requirements.txt