distutils alternatives?

[Lonnie Princehouse]

I'm in a situation where I need to distribute several interdependent
Python packages.  There are good reasons not to combine them all into
one package.  Distutils doesn't seem to be able to bundle a
heterogeneous mix of multiple packages and modules, and so I've
currently got people launching three installers in the proper sequence
in order to get software installed, which seems needlessly complicated
and confusing.  There must be a better way.  What I really want is a
way for the installer to automatically download and install
dependencies...

First, does anyone know of an alternative to distutils that does this?

Second, this is exactly what Gentoo's Portage software does, except
for Gentoo ebuilds instead of Python packages.  It also happens to be
written in Python.  Can anyone more familiar with Portage's internals
comment on the feasibility of harnessing emerge to work as a Python
package installer/distributer for systems which aren't running Gentoo?
 It is also foreseeable that something like this could be linked to
PyPI, etc.