How to state in requirements.txt a direct github source

Question

I've installed a library using the command

pip install git+git://github.com/mozilla/elasticutils.git

which installs it directly from a Github repository. This works fine and I want to have that dependency in my requirements.txt. I've looked at other tickets like this but that didn't solve my problem. If I put something like

-f git+git://github.com/mozilla/elasticutils.git
elasticutils==0.7.dev

in the requirements.txt file, a pip install -r requirements.txt results in the following output:

Downloading/unpacking elasticutils==0.7.dev (from -r requirements.txt (line 20))
  Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement elasticutils==0.7.dev (from -r requirements.txt (line 20)) (from versions: )
No distributions matching the version for elasticutils==0.7.dev (from -r requirements.txt (line 20))

The documentation of the requirements file does not mention links using the git+git protocol specifier, so maybe this is just not supported.

Does anybody have a solution for my problem?

Answer 1

“Editable” packages syntax can be used in requirements.txt to import packages from a variety of VCS (git, hg, bzr, svn):

-e git://github.com/mozilla/elasticutils.git#egg=elasticutils

Also, it is possible to point to particular commit:

-e git://github.com/mozilla/elasticutils.git@000b14389171a9f0d7d713466b32bc649b0bed8e#egg=elasticutils

Answer 2

Normally your requirements.txt file would look something like this:

package-one==1.9.4
package-two==3.7.1
package-three==1.0.1
...

To specify a Github repo, you do not need the package-name== convention.

The examples below update package-two using a GitHub repo. The text between @ and # denotes the specifics of the package.

Specify commit hash (41b95ec in the context of updated requirements.txt):

package-one==1.9.4
git+git://github.com/path/to/package-two@41b95ec#egg=package-two
package-three==1.0.1

Specify branch name (master):

git+git://github.com/path/to/package-two@master#egg=package-two

Specify tag (0.1):

git+git://github.com/path/to/package-two@0.1#egg=package-two

Specify release (3.7.1):

git+git://github.com/path/to/package-two@releases/tag/v3.7.1#egg=package-two

Note that #egg=package-two is not a comment here, it is to explicitly state the package name

This blog post has some more discussion on the topic.

Answer 3

requirements.txt allows the following ways of specifying a dependency on a package in a git repository as of pip 7.0:¹

[-e] git+git://git.myproject.org/SomeProject#egg=SomeProject
[-e] git+https://git.myproject.org/SomeProject#egg=SomeProject
[-e] git+ssh://git.myproject.org/SomeProject#egg=SomeProject
-e git+git@git.myproject.org:SomeProject#egg=SomeProject

For Github that means you can do (notice the omitted -e):

git+git://github.com/mozilla/elasticutils.git#egg=elasticutils

Why the extra answer?
I got somewhat confused by the -e flag in the other answers so here's my clarification:

The -e or --editable flag means that the package is installed in <venv path>/src/SomeProject and thus not in the deeply buried <venv path>/lib/pythonX.X/site-packages/SomeProject it would otherwise be placed in.²

Documentation

• ¹https://pip.readthedocs.org/en/stable/reference/pip_install/#git
• ²https://pip.readthedocs.org/en/stable/reference/pip_install/#vcs-support

Answer 4

First, install with git+git or git+https, in any way you know. Example of installing kronok's branch of the brabeion project:

pip install -e git+https://github.com/kronok/brabeion.git@12efe6aa06b85ae5ff725d3033e38f624e0a616f#egg=brabeion

Second, use pip freeze > requirements.txt to get the right thing in your requirements.txt. In this case, you will get

-e git+https://github.com/kronok/brabeion.git@12efe6aa06b85ae5ff725d3033e38f624e0a616f#egg=brabeion-master

Third, test the result:

pip uninstall brabeion
pip install -r requirements.txt

Answer 5

Since pip v1.5, (released Jan 1 2014: CHANGELOG, PR) you may also specify a subdirectory of a git repo to contain your module. The syntax looks like this:

pip install -e git+https://git.repo/some_repo.git#egg=my_subdir_pkg&subdirectory=my_subdir_pkg # install a python package from a repo subdirectory

Note: As a pip module author, ideally you'd probably want to publish your module in it's own top-level repo if you can. Yet this feature is helpful for some pre-existing repos that contain python modules in subdirectories. You might be forced to install them this way if they are not published to pypi too.