How to install git+https:// from setup.py using install_requires

Question

I have a project in which I have to install from git+https:

I can make it to work in this way:

virtualenv -p python3.5 bla
. bla/bin/activate
pip install numpy # must have numpy before the following pkg...
pip install 'git+https://github.com/cocodataset/cocoapi.git#subdirectory=PythonAPI'

However, I want to use it in a setup.py file in install_requires:

from setuptools import setup
setup(install_requires='git+https://github.com/cocodataset/cocoapi.git#subdirectory=PythonAPI', setup_requires='numpy')

and then, pip install -e . from the dir containing the setup.py

This doesn't work due to parse error:

    Complete output (1 lines):                                                                                                             
    error in bla_bla setup command: 'install_requires' must be a string or list of strings containing valid project/version requireme
nt specifiers; Invalid requirement, parse error at "'+https:/'"                                                                             
    ----------------------------------------
ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1: python setup.py egg_info Check the logs for full command output.  

The error doesn't occur if I install using pip install -r requires.txt (assuming I have the same string in that file) and not when using direct pip install git+......

How to fix this parsing error?

What I've tried so far:

1. wrapping the string with " / """ / ' / '''
2. adding 'r' before the string

Answer 1

install_requires must be a string or a list of strings with names and optionally URLs to get the package from:

install_requires=[
    'pycocotools @ git+https://github.com/cocodataset/cocoapi.git#subdirectory=PythonAPI'
]

See https://pip.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reference/pip_install/#requirement-specifiers and https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0440/#direct-references

This requires pip install including pip install . and doesn't work with python setup.py install.