http://code.google.com/p/django-package/

For now the patch adds a command line switch to the startapp command  
of django.core.management:
# django-admin.py --package startapp myapp
which asks for the meta information required for packaging. Please  
try it out!

It creates a basic skeleton application in the current directory,  
ready to be used by setuptools.
For testing purposes you can use setuptools standard functions like  
running "python setup.py develop" to add it to the python path,  
uninstalling with "python setup.py develop --uninstall" or wrapping  
it in an egg file with "python setup.py bdist_egg".

****
Concerning the application skeleton:

I would like to collect some of your ideas about the common file  
names and directories which should be created by default. This is  
also needed when it comes to packaging non-python files like template  
html-files, sql-files and so on. What are the common filenames? How  
do you manage your django projects?

As suggested by Neil there is already a release.py for easier  
manipulation of the meta data.
The current code creates this:

# ls
MANIFEST.in
docs/
release.py
setup.py
test/
myapp
myapp/templates/

****
When introducing something like package management we also have to  
think about changing the workflow.

Current workflow:
1. startproject
2. startapp
3. development and testing
4. semi-automatic deployment

Proposed workflow:
1. startapp (with package skeleton and meta information)
2. develop application and test with "python setup.py develop"
3. egg deployment [1] with "python setup.py bdist_egg" and  
"easy_install myapp-0.1.egg"

Generic applications like django-registration, django-tagging, django-
voting, django-utils, django-contact-form, django-forum.. [2] can be  
installed system wide and therefore live on the python path (in  
python's standard site-packages directory).

I'd like to encourage new developers to follow my workflow proposal  
as it makes development, packaging and deployment much easier.

Hence I suggest making it the default behaviour of "startapp" to  
create standalone packages, while requiring a command-line switch to  
create an application without the skeleton files (the current  
"develop inside a project" style, like in the tutorials).

****
One hypothetic idea is to introduce a whole new management command  
"package" to wrap most of the current functions like "startproject",  
"startapp" and the ideas before. This would wrap some of setuptools  
functions and could have a feature-set like: "package project",  
"package app", "package egg", "package upload" and so on. I actually  
do think this is evil since it wraps functions of setuptools but your  
mileage may vary. Tell me what you think!

Best,
Jannis

1: http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/PythonEggs
2: http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=django