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Project Requirements - requirements.txt

The requirements.txt file is used to specify the dependencies of the project.

It specifies the packages that are required to run the project, as well as their versions.

Generating requirements.txt

1. Using pip freeze:

  • If you're using a virtual environment (which is recommended), first activate it.
  • Run pip freeze > requirements.txt.
  • This command lists all installed packages in your environment (including dependencies) and their versions, redirecting the output to requirements.txt.
source venv/bin/activate     # On Unix/Linux
venv\Scripts\activate        # On Windows
. venv/Scripts/activate.ps1  # On Windows PowerShell
pip3 freeze > requirements.txt  # Unix/Linux
pip freeze > requirements.txt   # Windows

2. Manually Creating requirements.txt:

  • List each package you are directly using in your project, along with the desired version, in the requirements.txt file.
  • This method is more controlled but requires you to manually update the file when adding or updating dependencies. 
    flask==1.1.2
requests==2.25.1

3. Using pipreqs:

  • pipreqs is a tool that automatically generates a requirements.txt file based on the imports in your Python project.
  • Install pipreqs: pip install pipreqs.
  • Run pipreqs /path/to/project. 
    pipreqs /path/to/your/project/
  • pipreqs is useful because it only lists packages that your project explicitly uses, reducing the risk of including unnecessary dependencies.

4. Using poetry or Similar Tools:

  • If you are using poetry for dependency management, it maintains the dependencies in its own pyproject.toml file.
  • You can export the dependencies to a requirements.txt file using poetry export -f requirements.txt --output requirements.txt.