In this chapter, we've looked at how to package, release, and distribute each microservice. The current state of the art in Python packaging still requires some knowledge about the legacy tools, and this will be the case for some years until all the ongoing work in Python and PyPA become mainstream.

But as long as you have a standard, reproducible, and documented way to package and install your microservices, you should be fine.

Having numerous projects to run a single application adds a lot of complexity when you are developing it, and it's important to be able to run all pieces from within the same box.

Tools like PIP's development mode and Circus are useful for this, as it allows you to simplify how you run the whole stack--but they still require that you install things on your system even if it's inside a Virtualenv.

The other issue with running everything from your box is that you might not use an operating system that will be used to run your services in production, or have some libraries installed for other purposes, which might interfere.

The best way to prevent this problem is to run your stack in full isolation inside a virtual box. This is what the next chapter will cover, for example, how to run your services inside Docker.