diff --git a/tools/README b/tools/README
deleted file mode 100644
index 68698d697c..0000000000
--- a/tools/README
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,12 +0,0 @@
-Files in this directory are general developer tools or examples of how
-to do certain activities.
-
-If you're running on Fedora, see the instructions at http://docs.openstack.org/developer/heat/getting_started/on_fedora.html
-
------
-Tools
------
-
-+ heat-db-drop
-    - This script drops the heat database from mysql in the case of developer
-      data corruption or erasing heat.
diff --git a/tools/README.rst b/tools/README.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..6e87e08152
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tools/README.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+Files in this directory are general developer tools or examples of how
+to do certain activities.
+
+If you're running on Fedora, see the instructions at http://docs.openstack.org/developer/heat/getting_started/on_fedora.html
+
+Tools
+=====
+
+heat-db-drop
+  This script drops the heat database from mysql in the case of developer
+  data corruption or erasing heat.
+
+cfn-json2yaml
+  (bulk) convert AWS CloudFormation templates written in JSON
+  to HeatTemplateFormatVersion YAML templates
+
+Package lists
+=============
+
+Lists of Linux packages to install in order to successfully run Heat's
+unit test suit on a clean new Linux distro.
+
+test-requires-deb
+  list of DEB packages as of Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty
+
+test-requires-rpm
+  list of RPM packages as of Fedora 20
diff --git a/tools/test-requires-deb b/tools/test-requires-deb
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..f170068167
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tools/test-requires-deb
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+build-essential
+python-dev
+libxml2-dev
+libxslt1-dev
+libyaml-dev
+libssl-dev
+libffi-dev
+libmysqlclient-dev
+libpq-dev
diff --git a/tools/test-requires-rpm b/tools/test-requires-rpm
index 3874d1f79f..07caafb4ca 100644
--- a/tools/test-requires-rpm
+++ b/tools/test-requires-rpm
@@ -1,11 +1,9 @@
-# this file lists dependencies required for the testing of heat (RPM version)
-python-setuptools
-
-python-coverage
-python-mox
-python-testrepository
-python-nose
-#openstack.nose_plugin>=0.7
-python-pep8
-python-sphinx
-python-paramiko
+gcc
+python-devel
+libxml2-devel
+libxslt-devel
+libyaml-devel
+openssl-devel
+libffi-devel
+mariadb-devel
+postgresql-devel