8 Comparison🔗ℹ

I tend to compare Req to Python’s "requirements.txt" files, but more adequate comparison would be to the cask utility for GNU Emacs. This is because "requirements.txt" does not know anything about project-local packages, because of this the dependencies tend to be duplicated between "setup.py" and "requirements.txt".

In Cask the user specifies the files that are used in the project and dependencies listed in them are extracted. In addition a "development" section can be defined containing dependencies not necessary for the package runtime.

Example "Cask" file looks like the following (taken from company-ebuild):

(source melpa)

(package-file "company-ebuild.el")

(files "company-ebuild-custom.el"

"company-ebuild-keywords.el"

"company-ebuild.el")

(development (depends-on "company")

(depends-on "yasnippet"))

Few similarities to Req files can be noted here:

• "source" — similar to catalogs attribute,

• "package-file"/"files" — similar to local attribute,

• "development" — similar to defining extra package sets.