Package Upgrade does not work as Advertised

[baderj]

Given the following requirements.in file without any pinned version:

playwright
titlecase

And this playwright.txt with both packages outdated:

#
# This file is autogenerated by pip-compile with Python 3.10
# by the following command:
#
#    pip-compile
#
greenlet==3.2.2
    # via playwright
playwright==1.51.0
    # via -r requirements.in
pyee==12.1.1
    # via playwright
titlecase==2.3
    # via -r requirements.in
typing-extensions==4.13.2
    # via pyee

I expect pip-compile --upgrade-package playwright to update playwright to the latest version (1.52 at the time of writing), but it stays at 1.51.0:

#
# This file is autogenerated by pip-compile with Python 3.10
# by the following command:
#
#    pip-compile
#
greenlet==3.2.2
    # via playwright
playwright==1.51.0
    # via -r requirements.in
pyee==12.1.1
    # via playwright
titlecase==2.3
    # via -r requirements.in
typing-extensions==4.13.2
    # via pyee

Doing general pip-compile --upgrade or giving the version number pip-compile --upgrade-package playwright==1.52 works as intended. But the first will update all packages, while the second requires knowing the latest version number. According to the documentation, a --upgrade-package is supposed to update a single package to the latest version.

Environment Versions

1. Ubuntu 25.04
2. Python version: 3.10.12
3. pip version: 22.0.2
4. pip-tools version: 7.3.0

Steps to replicate

1. create a requirement.in with this content:

playwright
titlecase

and a requirement.txt with these outdated version:

#
# This file is autogenerated by pip-compile with Python 3.10
# by the following command:
#
#    pip-compile
#
greenlet==3.2.2
    # via playwright
playwright==1.51.0
    # via -r requirements.in
pyee==12.1.1
    # via playwright
titlecase==2.3
    # via -r requirements.in
typing-extensions==4.13.2
    # via pyee

2. Run pip-compile --upgrade-package playwright

Expected result

playwright should now be at version 1.52 in the requirement.txt

Actual result

The requirements.txt does not change. The version can only be updated with either

• first removing the requirements.txt and running pip-compile (this will update all dependencies)
• running pip-compile --upgrade (again this will update everything)
• specifying the version number with pip-compile --upgrade-package playwright==1.52, this works, but requires a lookup of the version number first.

[webknjaz]

Looks like GH ate most of your input. Plz edit the post to reinclude all the details.

[baderj]

Looks like GH ate most of your input. Plz edit the post to reinclude all the details.

Sorry about that, I fixed the report.

[webknjaz]

specifying the version number with pip-compile --upgrade-package playwright==1.52, this works, but requires a lookup of the version number first.

Does doing this downgrade any of the deps?

[baderj]

specifying the version number with pip-compile --upgrade-package playwright==1.52, this works, but requires a lookup of the version number first.

Does doing this downgrade any of the deps?

Playwright 1.52 is the latest version currently so I don't see any downgrades. But first setting 1.52 in requirements.in:

playwright==1.52

and running pip-compile produces this requirements.txt:

greenlet==3.2.3
    # via playwright
playwright==1.52.0
    # via -r requirements.in
pyee==13.0.0
    # via playwright
typing-extensions==4.14.0
    # via pyee

Then removing the version from requirements.in and running pip-compile --upgrade-package playwright==1.51 produces

greenlet==3.2.3
    # via playwright
playwright==1.51.0
    # via -r requirements.in
pyee==12.1.1
    # via playwright
typing-extensions==4.14.0
    # via pyee

Which did downgrade pyee. So yes, dependencies are downgraded when doing a --upgrade-package to a lower version.

But still, running pip-compile --upgrade-package playwright does not upgrade to 1.52.

I tried even lower version, like installing 1.23 then doing a pip-compile --upgrade-package playwright. Again, the version is untouched.

Can you confirm that pip-compile --upgrade-package playwright should update the package? Or am I doing something wrong here?

[sirosen]

I've spent a few minutes tinkering to reproduce, and I'm able to get the same behavior.
I'm still trying to figure out "who changed, and when" to diagnose the cause and work on a fix.

I don't know if it will make it into the current release. I want to prioritize getting a release out which unblocks people who are stuck on issues with the latest pip and Python versions.

Can you confirm that pip-compile --upgrade-package playwright should update the package? Or am I doing something wrong here?

Yes, your usage looks correct to me and should update playwright in the requirements.txt.
I went way back to pip-tools==5.5.0 (pip==20.3, click==7.1.2) on Python 3.9, and was able to get the correct behavior. So I've established that this wasn't "always broken". But I haven't started to bisect the pip and pip-tools history yet to find out when this broke.

---

There's one small (inconsequential?) thing that I noticed, which is that the version info in the original post has to be wrong -- pip-tools==7.3.0 isn't compatible with pip==22.0.2. Maybe you meant pip==22.2? That's what I've been able to test.