there was no easy way for upgrading package by package, and updating the requirements.txt file, I wrote this pip-upgrader which also updates the versions in your requirements.txt file for the packages chosen (or all packages).

Installation

pip install pip-upgrader

Usage

Activate your virtualenv (important, because it will also install the new versions of upgraded packages in current virtualenv).

cd into your project directory, then run:

pip-upgrade

Advanced usage

If the requirements are placed in a non-standard location, send them as arguments:

pip-upgrade path/to/requirements.txt

If you already know what package you want to upgrade, simply send them as arguments:

pip-upgrade -p django -p celery -p dateutil