[Answer]-Faking an egg in buildout from a github repository

From what I understand, buidout heavily depends on setuptools (or at lease a setup.py). Without this, buildout cannot produce a distribution (an egg). Luckily GitHub lets you easily fork a repository so you can add a setup.py. 😉 You might want to consider supplying a patch.

Since there is no recipe (to my knowledge) that lets you add projects without a setup.py. Such a project sounds like an anti-pattern since this would break the ‘contract’ of a project requiring a setup.py.

The first option seems like the better one. When your project is on GitHub you can use mr.develop to pull in your dependency.