How to implement module dependencies in a theme and package modules with a theme?
Up to Drupal version 7, themes do not allow to have the typical directive for module dependencies in their info files. Because themes are supposed to be module independent.

However, for D8, there is the issue about dependencies[] for themes, so they can depend on modules (created back in 2009 ... current status = needs work).

For D7, Comment #3 in (Drupal core) issue 647014 contains a possible work around that you may want to consider, something like so:

&lt;?php
function mytheme_preprocess_page(&amp;$vars)
{
  ...
  if (!module_exists('needed_module'))
  {
    // No needed_module means we need to add it, let everyone know.
    //
    print "&lt;h1&gt;"  . t( 'mytheme requires that module needed_module is installed')
        . "&lt;/h1&gt;"
        . "&lt;h6&gt;"  . t( 'warning generated in file: %f', array ( '%f'=&gt;__FILE__ ))
        . "&lt;/h6&gt;";
  }
  ...
}
?&gt;