diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 4c83d1e66a079816df87bb982a6b0c4e4d64400d..86b73626b643e5e35eab498a7fe4292ec4c492ef 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -6,12 +6,10 @@ xarray
 pandas
 cmocean
 scipy
-ipdb
 ipywidgets
 ipykernel
 jupytext
 nbconvert
-pytest
 healpy
 cftime
 #cartopy         # cannot easily be installed with pip
diff --git a/requirements_development.txt b/requirements_development.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..5778fd9b7a4034ebf690052b06c204951fd6dd8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/requirements_development.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+ipdb
+pytest
\ No newline at end of file