No, that's the point of overly-complicated package systems. The point of a package system is to take the several files belonging to this project and dump them all in the appropriate places, and run any scripts necessary for installation. Dependencies and how to satisfy them are not part of packaging in general. They can be handled either automatically or manually outside the package system.

Since Debian, and hence Maemo, has integrated dependency into their packaging system, you should do it when packaging for them. But it's important to realize that that's only a particular choice made in this distro, and not some universal truth, nor necessarily even a good idea.