# Generating Requirements the easy way with Pipreqs

`requirements.txt` is an essential file that stores the information about all the libraries, modules, and packages that are used while developing a particular project. It contains all the dependencies needed for the project to run.

The traditional way to generate the requirements file is to do

`pip freeze > requirements.txt`

The above approach works well if you have a `virtual env` that consists of only the project-specific packages. But in case, you don’t have a virtual env created, `pip freeze` will save all the packages that were installed in the base environment even if we are not using them in our project.

The easy & faster alternative of `pip freeze` is the `pipreqs` package in python.

Generating `requirements.txt` with `pipreqs` can be done in two steps:

1.  `pip install pipreqs`
2.  checkout to the root project folder and run `pipreqs .` OR `pipreqs /path/to/project` . This will directly create the file in the root folder.

→ In case you want to review the packages before creating the file, run `pipreqs /path/to/project —-print.`

→ If the requirements.txt is already created & you want to overwrite it, `pipreqs /path/to/project --force.`

→ If there are multiple sub-directories within your project & you want to ignore them while creating the requirements, `pipreqs /path/to/project --ignore /path/to/directory`

→ If you want to store the packages in some other file, use `pipreqs /path/to/project --savepath /location/of/file/`

**Note:** *`pipreqs` scans the .py files in the root folder & uses the imports in the project to generate the file, so in case there are some additional plugin dependencies, you will have to add them manually.*