Update requirements.txt without installing packages

Question

I have a requirements.txt with dependencies pinned using ==. The pinning using == is a requirement to ensure reproducibility. I'd like to update all of them to the most recent version. I do not want to install any of them, I only want to modify requirements.txt

Please add some more details, or an example of what you are wanting to do. As written, this question is likely to be closed due to lack of details. — blackbrandt, May 23 '23 at 13:00
Well, packages mentioned in requirements.txt usually installed when you do `pip install -r requirements.txt `. — Abdul Niyas P M, May 23 '23 at 13:00
To always refer to latest version then you simply don't pin to a specific version number. — TheMonarch, May 23 '23 at 13:35
Short of gathering all the latest version numbers and updating requirements.txt, I don't think pip has a ready command to do what you want. This discussion might give you pointers on how you can work out a solution https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24764549/upgrade-python-packages-from-requirements-txt-using-pip-command — TheMonarch, May 23 '23 at 14:18

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 23 '23 at 14:18

There are many options for getting the latest package versions from PyPI described in Python and pip, list all versions of a package that's available?. If I take one that has an API that can be used within Python, e.g., the answer describing using the luddite package, then you could do the following (after installing luddite itself):

Let's assume you have a requirements.txt file containing:

numpy==1.20.1
scipy==1.5.2
panda==1.5.3

then you could do:

import luddite

requirements = []

# read in packages and get the latest versions
with open("requirements.txt", "r") as fp:
   for line in fp.readlines():
       package = line.strip().split("==")[0]

       # get latest version here
       latestversion = luddite.get_versions_pypi(package)[-1]
       requirements.append(f"{package}=={latestversion}")

# overwrite requirements.txt with latest versions
with open("requirements.txt", "w") as fp:
    for i, req in enumerate(requirements):
        fp.write(req)
        if i < len(requirements) - 1:
            fp.write("\n")

It should then (as of 23 May 2023) contain:

numpy==1.24.3
scipy==1.10.1
pandas==2.0.1

Update requirements.txt without installing packages

1 Answers1