If you don't want to force your users to install pip, you can emulate its behavior with this:
import sys
from os import path as p
try:
from setuptools import setup, find_packages
except ImportError:
from distutils.core import setup, find_packages
def read(filename, parent=None):
parent = (parent or __file__)
try:
with open(p.join(p.dirname(parent), filename)) as f:
return f.read()
except IOError:
return ''
def parse_requirements(filename, parent=None):
parent = (parent or __file__)
filepath = p.join(p.dirname(parent), filename)
content = read(filename, parent)
for line_number, line in enumerate(content.splitlines(), 1):
candidate = line.strip()
if candidate.startswith('-r'):
for item in parse_requirements(candidate[2:].strip(), filepath):
yield item
else:
yield candidate
setup(
...
install_requires=list(parse_requirements('requirements.txt'))
)