We both had these options when we considered how to handle repeatable installations: A) resort to shipping around a tarball for each release and disuse easy_install or buildout, B) spell out all the versions of transitive dependencies in a meta-egg or in a requirements file or a buildout.cfg or whatever, C) use my own index and give easy_install a policy knob that prevents it from using distribution_links and make everyone use my easy_install version, D) make my own index full of eggs that don't have distribution_links and let people use "normal" easy_install.

You chose B. So did the Grok project, for the record. I chose D. I think the TG guys did too. I don't think there's a "right way" (although I prefer the index way), both ways work. I suspect there's not much more to say about it.