I'll likely be helping to guide updates to the Python packaging format standards over the coming months. While they won't hit the standard library until 3.4, there will likely be third party tool support in earlier versions (since the whole point of the exercise is to eliminate the current implementation coupling to distutils and setuptools in favour of better defined metadata standards for communication between multiple tools).
The first step will be reviewing the status quo and then creating a plausible road map (as well as describing current efforts for various aspects). I've started on that here: http://python-notes.boredomandlaziness.org/en/latest/pep_ideas/core_packagin...
One thing I would *love* to be able to enable is adding support for automatic mapping of PyPI distribution names (similar to what already exists for Perl and CPAN) where (for example), a developer could just write "Requires: python(south)" instead of having to figure out manually the name of the appropriate RPM package in Fedora.
I believe that the new metadata fields defined in PEP 345 and PEP 426 should be enough to support that when generating a SPEC file from the PyPI metadata.
Cheers, Nick.