This is solved in pip nowadays with constraint files [1], so you can put your top-level dependencies in requirements.txt and all the transient ones in constrain

This is solved in pip nowadays with constraint files [1], so you can put your top-level dependencies in requirements.txt and all the transient ones in constraints.txt: pip install -r requirements.txt -c constraints.txt [1] https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/user_guide/#constraints-files https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/user_guide/#constraints-files