kapresley:

I wish you success in getting a 'full' GUI (PyGTK) development/operational environment running on your Mac OSX

Also, I think that I was a bit too flippant in my description of what a 'deb' file is. Here is a better explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_package

Sure enough, under linux the 'ar' command is what you need first in order to 'peel apart' a Debian 'deb' file without using 'dpkg' (the natural choice). Like my README says, I am much more comfortable with 'RPM' files, but was forced to learn a tiny bit about 'deb' due to Maemo.