I'm working by myself right now, but am looking at ways to scale my operation. 
I'd like to find an easy way to version my Python distribution, so that I can recreate it very easily. Is there a tool to do this? Or can I add /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ (or whatever) to an svn repo? This doesn't solve the problems with PATHs, but I can always write a script to alter the path. Ideally, the solution would be to build my Python env in a VM, and then hand copies of the VM out.
How have other people solved this?
You want to use virtualenv.  It lets you create an application(s) specific directory for installed packages.  You can also use pip to generate and build a requirements.txt
Is there a way to "version" my python distribution?