Distributing programs depending on third party modules.

[Tina I]

Hi list,

Is there a preferred way to distribute programs that depends on third 
party modules like PyQt, Beautifulsoup etc? I have used setuptools and 
just having the setup script check for the existence of the required 
modules. If they're not found I have it exit with a message that it need 
this or that installed.

But this is not very convenient for the end user and I have got a few 
complaints about it. Am I missing something in setuptools or is there a 
better way to do it (except for bundling the modules in the package 
which seem like a rather nasty workaround)?

Thanks
Tina