How can I upgrade specific packages using pip and a requirements file?

I ran the following command and it upgraded from 1.2.3 to 1.4.0

pip install Django --upgrade

Shortcut for upgrade:

pip install Django -U

Note: if the package you are upgrading has any requirements this command will additionally upgrade all the requirements to the latest versions available. In recent versions of pip, you can prevent this behavior by specifying --upgrade-strategy only-if-needed. With that flag, dependencies will not be upgraded unless the installed versions of the dependent packages no longer satisfy the requirements of the upgraded package.

First make sure you have checked the most voted answer.

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I'm not sure if it's exactly your problem, but in my case, I wasn't able to upgrade Django to 1.2.4 - I was always finishing with 1.2.3 version, so I uninstalled Django with:

<virtualenv>/bin/pip uninstall Django

Then I removed <virtualenv>/build/Django directory and finally I installed the proper version with:

<virtualenv>/bin/pip install Django