How to state in requirements.txt a direct github source

Solution 1:

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

Specify branch name (master):

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

Specify tag (0.1):

git+https://github.com/path/to/[email protected]#egg=package-two

Specify release (3.7.1):

git+https://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.

Solution 2:

“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

Solution 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 [email protected]:SomeProject#egg=SomeProject (deprecated as of Jan 2020)

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