diff --git a/test/smoketest/.gitignore b/test/smoketest/.gitignore
index 16d3c4dbb..0af220808 100644
--- a/test/smoketest/.gitignore
+++ b/test/smoketest/.gitignore
@@ -1 +1,2 @@
 .cache
+smoketest-venv/
diff --git a/test/smoketest/README.md b/test/smoketest/README.md
index 971136db7..242c9ff20 100644
--- a/test/smoketest/README.md
+++ b/test/smoketest/README.md
@@ -10,23 +10,46 @@ Note: the pytest tests from zerotest are currently unused and disabled.
 
 ## Installing Test Dependencies
 
-For now, you'll need to install
-[zerotest](https://github.com/jjyr/zerotest)
+For now, you need to install [zerotest](https://github.com/jjyr/zerotest)
 to run these tests, and/or generate new ones in the same way.
 
-This is mainly tested with python3, but has been seen to work
-on python2 also.  To install dependencies:
+This is mainly tested with python3, but has been seen to work on python2.
 
-    pip install -r requirements.txt
+### Create a Python virtual environment
 
-or perhaps the following (or similar) if you have multiple Python
-installations.
+Create a new [virtual environment](https://packaging.python.org/tutorials/installing-packages/#creating-virtual-environments)
+for the project:
 
-    pip3 install -r requirements.txt
+    $ python3 -m venv smoketest-venv
 
-Installing inside an isolated
-[virtual environment](https://packaging.python.org/tutorials/installing-packages/#creating-virtual-environments)
-(aka virtualenv) is the preferred approach.
+(This creates a directory called "smoketest-venv" inside the current
+directory.)
+
+On Debian/Ubuntu systems, the command above may instruct you to first install
+`python3-venv`.  If you are using Python 3.4 and installing `python3-venv`
+gives you an error like the following:
+
+> E: Unable to locate package python3-venv
+
+then you can try installing `python3.4-venv` instead.  This was seen
+[to be required](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python3.4/+bug/1532231)
+on Ubuntu.
+
+To activate the virtual environment in a new shell window:
+
+    $ source smoketest-venv/bin/activate
+
+### Installing Python dependencies
+
+Install the Python dependencies in your Python environment (e.g. in the
+virtual environment you created above):
+
+    $ pip install -r requirements.txt
+
+(You may need to replace `pip` with `pip3` above depending on your system.)
+
+If `requirements.txt` ever needs updating, you can follow the instructions
+inside `requirements.in`.
 
 ## Running a smoketest
 
diff --git a/test/smoketest/requirements.in b/test/smoketest/requirements.in
index bd8a4df36..a48bf0a5b 100644
--- a/test/smoketest/requirements.in
+++ b/test/smoketest/requirements.in
@@ -1,8 +1,14 @@
 # "Abstract" dependencies for the project
 #
 # The sibling requirements.txt file contains the corresponding concrete /
-# pinned dependencies.  You can use pip-tools to automatically update
-# requirements.txt from this file:
-# https://github.com/jazzband/pip-tools
+# pinned dependencies.
+#
+# To update requirements.txt (e.g. to check for upgrades in package
+# dependencies or to add a new dependency to the current file), run the
+# following from a new virtual environment:
+#
+#     $ pip install -r requirements.in
+#     $ pip freeze > requirements.txt
+#
 requests
 zerotest
diff --git a/test/smoketest/requirements.txt b/test/smoketest/requirements.txt
index 23f5a509c..8883a6c18 100644
--- a/test/smoketest/requirements.txt
+++ b/test/smoketest/requirements.txt
@@ -1,18 +1,12 @@
-#
-# This file is autogenerated by pip-compile
-# To update, run:
-#
-#    pip-compile --output-file requirements.txt requirements.in
-#
-certifi==2017.7.27.1      # via requests
-chardet==3.0.4            # via requests
-idna==2.6                 # via requests
-jinja2==2.9.6             # via zerotest
-markupsafe==1.0           # via jinja2
-py==1.4.34                # via pytest
-pytest==3.2.1             # via zerotest
+certifi==2017.7.27.1
+chardet==3.0.4
+idna==2.6
+Jinja2==2.9.6
+MarkupSafe==1.0
+py==1.4.34
+pytest==3.2.1
 requests==2.18.4
-six==1.10.0               # via zerotest
-urllib3==1.22             # via requests
-werkzeug==0.12.2          # via zerotest
+six==1.10.0
+urllib3==1.22
+Werkzeug==0.12.2
 zerotest==1.2.1