Running sao does not require nodejs/npm installed, so create a task to create a distributable archive which can be easily deployed on a separate (prod/dev) machine.
We already publish release of sao, I do not think we should manage a specific distribution channel. We do not do that with other parts of the project so I do not think we should for sao.
We use standard distribution channel like PyPI or npmjs and for the rest we rely on distribution packagers.
I'm trying to use 4.6 on debian stretch, but tryton-sao packages is not (yet?) present.
Therefore I chose the "easy" option to deploy from the sources myself.