[catshirt]

i mean, aren't specified versions crucial for compatibility? what am i missing?

on second thought, i guess you are suggesting to specify the major, with an ambiguous minor? but doesn't this require that no package will introduce a breaking change in a minor version? not sure you can rely on that assumption.

[tedmiston]

Yes, and yes. It's the best practice to have flexible subversions of dependencies (or dependencies of dependencies) when you're shipping a package with setup.py (http://python-packaging-user-guide.readthedocs.org/en/latest...). However in requirements.txt for an app that runs by itself, their approach is the best practice.