[Distutils] How to specify dependencies in Python

[Paul Moore]

On 16 January 2017 at 15:59, Thomas Güttler
<guettliml at thomas-guettler.de> wrote:
> Thank you for your explanation. For me this means, I should tell the
> maintainer
> that a library should specify it's dependencies via install_requires.

Well yes, but that doesn't mean the quoted comment from Quickstart is
wrong. It's not clear without context whether the comment is intended
to refer to applications using this library, or other libraries using
this library. It's even possible that the project author doesn't fully
understand the subtleties here.

> I think requirements.txt should be the result of some kind of
> Continous-Integration run.
> If all tests are successful, then requirements.txt should be created with
> "pip freeze".
>
> This means, that the Continous-Integration run does not use requirements.txt
> to
> build its environment.
>
> Next question: Where is the best place to store requirements.txt?
>
> I think it should not be in the repo of a library. It should be somehow
> outside.
>
> Up to now I a missing the right english term for it.

I'm not at all sure how true that is, but as I don't write this sort
of application, and certainly don't publish such things, I can't
really comment.

>> If you can point to the actual library you're referring to, it would
>> be easier to be specific :-)
>
>
> I did not tell the name here, since I don't want to offend the library
> maintainer.
> I think he does not like it, when people talk behind his back about his
> code.
>
> I will do so after we found a solid solution here.

OK, but I don't think we can find anything more concrete without more
information, and at some point you're going to end up having to give
enough information that we might as well just look at the project.
After all, it's (presumably) open source, so we can always look at the
code and submit PRs/issues anyway. It seems unlikely that the author
is going to be offended - if there's a risk, why not simply invite
him/her to participate in this thread?

Paul