I plan to briefly introduce pip requirements files and the wheel format. I will then demonstrate an approach for structuring requirements files, using "snapshot" requirement files, and building "wheelhouses" that get committed to your VCS. This approach has the following benefits:
- known working & tested dependencies are clearly communicated between developers
- project setup for new developers is simplified
- build servers no longer throw erroneous errors if PyPI is down
- production environments no longer need build tools installed on them
- production environments are guaranteed to be running on the same version of dependencies that were developed on and tested
