Eric, you're right, "native" isn't exactly what I was getting at.  I want the debian/ directory created right next to the setup.py, as I've described in some follow ups.

As far as what you see in setupdebian, this is just preliminary experiments using test-driven development.  I had intended to support switches for other types of packaging options, but first things first.  Since Andrew is willing, I'd rather work with him to get some of the features I'd like to see rather than continue with a separate package, so if that proves fruitful, I'll abandon setupdebian.

BTW, have you seen the python-debian package?  It seems to have a lot of useful stuff for manipulating changelogs, control files and such.