Well it already suggests to run pip install requests. I'd actually prefer (if we link to something) to link something like https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Pywikibot/Installation. The main issue I see is that we have currently three different setups:

• compat
• core 2.0 using httplib2
• core master using requests

So that page probably must be updated and it should separate between mandatory dependencies (e.g. also the future package on Python 2.6 and maybe unicodedata2 on 2.6.6 depending on T102461) and optional dependencies.

@Multichill, if the user uses pwb.py, the requests error message is the same as the previous httplib2 error message:

https://github.com/wikimedia/pywikibot-core/commit/952665acaa9ab2dd1a78cb4a935f3b5743941913#diff-f15f62388b2fa48d5a3f9f09dbafceffL143

The change was here: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/213977/

As xZise points out, the code is already giving basic instructions.
IMO 'code' the goes far enough.
pip is now the official package installer, and was backported to be part of the official Python 2.7.10 distribution.

We also have a requirements.txt that can be used with pip, and python setup.py install also works.

The use of requirements.txt is mentioned on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Pywikibot/Installation#Dependencies . However that page is a awful mess.

Current py2 implementation does not seem ok to me:

$ python2 pwb.py shell
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "pwb.py", line 151, in <module>
    "Try running 'pip install requests'.".format(e))
ImportError: No module named requests
Python module 'requests' is required.
Try running 'pip install requests'.

The information about missing requests is written into 6 lines, which is not ok at all. Basically it says:

Line 1: There is an error
Line 2: Error on line xyz in pwb.py
Line 3: Try this to install requests
Line 4: Requests missing
Line 5: Requests missing
Line 6: Try this to install requests

I would expect max 5 lines:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "pwb.py", line xyz, in <module>
    raise RequestsError(e)
ImportError: No module named requests
Install it by running 'pip install requests'.

Line 1: There is an error
Line 2: Error on line xyz in pwb.py
Line 3: Usual line of code not duplicating messages above or below
Line 5: Requests missing
Line 6: Try this to install requests