Ok, this is a quicky i found here.

I use bdist_rpm when building python modules, because I like them to be neatly installed as rpms, but it normally breaks, puking over not packaged pyo files.

Just put this:

[install] 
optimize=1

in the project’s setup.cfg, or perhaps better yet, in ~/.pydistutils.cfg or in $prefix/lib/python2.x/distutils/distutils.cfg.

This will then always set --optimize=1 when install is invoked. This way bdist_rpm will not break (hopefully). Or at least not on pyo files. Tried it with the Skype4Py package, it worked like a charm.