Managing Python Dependencies Transcripts
Chapter: Setting Up Reproducible Environments & Application Deploys
Lecture: Introduction to Requirements Files
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You might have seen those requirements files before, they are usually called requirements.txt or sometimes also requirements.pip
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and what they are is basically a list of pip install arguments placed in a text file.
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So this is what a very simple requirements.txt file would look like. You can see here that the requirements file contains a list of package names.
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So in this case, it includes the requests module, with a specific version using the version specifier syntax you learned about earlier,
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and it also lists the schedule module with a similar version specifier. Now this is a very simple example but it's also quite typical
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of what a real world requirements file would look like. One interesting thing you can do with these requirements files
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is that you can add comments to these files, so you would just place the hash character and then you can place a comment.
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This is often helpful to explain what is going on in your requirements files
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or if you want to leave a comment for the next developer working on that file. Requirements files capture all of the third party dependencies
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a Python program needs to run, and usually, they do that by specifying the exact package versions.
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Using requirements files a Python environment can be reproduced in exactly the same way on a different machine or for different developer,
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or even just in a different directory on your local machine. They are a key piece for achieving repeatability in your Python built environments.