On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 3:59 PM, Marcus Smith <qwc...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> In general, requirements.txt seems to be an >> anti-pattern. You either have to use likely to break tooling or you'll >> have to reinvent that from scratch. You're better off putting it >> directly in setup.py and using setup.py to install dependencies in a >> virtualenv instead of requirements.txt > > > I don't know your context for calling it an anti-pattern, but there are > valid use cases for requirements.txt vs install_requires. > here's what the "Python Packaging User Guide" has on the distinction > > https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/requirements.html > > skipping to the distinctions, it lists four: > > Whereas install_requires defines the dependencies for a single project, > Requirements Files are often used to define the requirements for a complete > python environment. > > Whereas install_requires requirements are minimal, requirements files often > contain an exhaustive listing of pinned versions for the purpose of > achieving repeatable installations of a complete environment. > > Whereas install_requires requirements are “Abstract”, requirements files > often contain pip options like --index-url or --find-links to make > requirements “Concrete”. [1] > > Whereas install_requires metadata is automatically analyzed by pip during an > install, requirements files are not, and only are used when a user > specifically installs them using pip install -r.
In 90% of the cases I see, requirements.txt are used to define the requirements for the project to function which typically are the exact same requirements necessary when installing the project. People also will then write a test-requirements.txt (or dev-requirements.txt) file to have a complete development environment. In this case, Thomas seems to be using requirements.txt to define the requirements necessary when installing the software they're developing. If requirements.txt were used solely for a development environment, they would look more like | . | dev-requirement-1>=0.1 | # etc. Instead they seem to be used more to define the same requirements someone would define in install_requires. This is the anti-pattern I'm talking about. _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
