Is there a Python package management tool that is similar to Java maven, which allows to specify all dependent packages for a project?

The most popular package managers allow you to specify a list of required packages for the simple reason that most make use of the stock distutils require keyword that is located in the http://setup.py script - see http://docs.python.org/distutils/setupscript.html for details. Setuptools (also known as easy_install) is I think now included with, or has parts of it included with, the later versions of Python. PIP allows for a requirement file: http://pip.openplans.org/#requirements-files PIP behind the scenes is calling the stock distutils/setuptools modules to do the heavy lifting of package management.  The key difference for PIP is that it tells setuptools to install the packages "flat" by passing in the --single-version-externally-managed option. I think one of the most helpful suggestions I ever received was to stop installing packages into the system python location and instead use VirtualEnv to manage each project so it has it's own copy of any required packages. So use whichever method is more in line with how you feel about package management, but IMO pair it with VirtualEnv so you can back-out or change things without having to worry about damaging your base Python install.