diff --git a/bindep.txt b/bindep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..2c27fbd06
--- /dev/null
+++ b/bindep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+# these are needed to compile Python dependencies from sources
+python-dev [platform:dpkg test]
+python3-all-dev [platform:dpkg !platform:ubuntu-precise test]
+python-devel [platform:rpm test]
+python3-devel [platform:rpm test]
+build-essential [platform:dpkg test]
+libssl-dev [platform:dpkg test]
+# these are needed by infra for python-* jobs
+
+# this is needed for compiling translations
+gettext [test]
+
+# these are needed to build a deploy ramdisk
+
+# NOTE apparmor is an undeclared dependency for docker on ubuntu,
+# see https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/9745
+apparmor [platform:dpkg imagebuild]
+docker.io [platform:dpkg imagebuild]
+docker-io [platform:rpm imagebuild]
+gnupg [imagebuild]
+squashfs-tools [platform:dpkg platform:redhat imagebuild]
+squashfs [platform:suse imagebuild]
+libguestfs0 [platform:dpkg imagebuild]
+libguestfs [platform:rpm imagebuild]
+python-libguestfs [platform:dpkg imagebuild]
+# for TinyIPA build
+wget [imagebuild]
+python-pip [imagebuild]
+unzip [imagebuild]
+sudo [imagebuild]
+gawk [imagebuild]