# How to determine packages used in a Python project that has no requirements.txt

Have you ever cloned a python project on GitHub that did not include a requirements.txt and you could not make it run on your local machine due to compatibility issues? What if there was a solution that could crawl the whole project and generate a requirements.txt file for you for the packages used and their versions? Well, good news there is!

## Prerequisites

* You need to have python 3.5+ installed - Download python [here](https://www.python.org/downloads/)
    
* Pip package installer- Download pip from [here](https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/cli/pip_download/)
    
* Venv for creating virtual environments - Download Venv from [here](https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html)
    

## Working with projects that do not have a requirements.txt

I came across this issue when I was following machine learning tutorials on Microsft Learn. The GitHub repo only has the code with no requirements.txt. I was particularly interested in the code for extracting text from images and pdfs. The code looks as shown in the image below.

![mslearn.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1643524215626/qIkxxSaJE.png align="left")

You can see there is no requirements.txt. We have to first clone the whole repo then navigate to the specific folder we want to work on

![repo.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1643524226722/ZC4OHN2Om.png align="left")

Start by cloning the whole repository.

```shell
git clone https://github.com/MicrosoftLearning/AI-102-AIEngineer.git
```

Then get into the specific folder we are interested in

```shell
cd AI-102-AIEngineer-master\20-ocr\Python\read-text\
```

The project structure is as shown below \`\`\` AI-102-AIEngineer-master └───20-ocr | └───Python | | └───read-text | | | read-text.py | | | .env | | └───images | | | | Lincoln.jpg | | | | Note.jpg | | | | Rome.pdf

````bash

## Setting up an environment

Setting up an environment for a project ensures that the installs done for the project are within that environment without affecting global installs. This can also be useful when a specific package is only installed once on a specific project.
To set up a venv environment:

```shell
python -m venv name-of-environment
````

Name the environment folder that you wish. I'll name mine venv. My current folder structure now looks like \`\`\` AI-102-AIEngineer-master └───20-ocr | └───Python | | └───read-text | | | read-text.py | | | .env | | | venv | | └───images | | | | Lincoln.jpg | | | | Note.jpg | | | | Rome.pdf

````bash

On windows activate the environment 
```shell
 cd venv\Scripts\ && activate && cd .. && cd ..
````

With the environment set, next, we need to install (Pigar)\[https://pypi.org/project/pigar/\]. Pigar is a tool used to generate requirements.txt for python projects. Install Pigar with pip

```shell
pip install pigar
```

To use pigar on our project simply run

```shell
pigar
```

You can find a generated requirements.txt on your project folder. Learn more about pigar from its [documentation](https://pypi.org/project/pigar/). With a requirements.txt, install all the dependencies using

```shell
pip install -r requirements.txt
```

Happy hacking!