diff --git a/.platform.app.yaml b/.platform.app.yaml
index cdbe76b0de2..1a2692fd0fb 100644
--- a/.platform.app.yaml
+++ b/.platform.app.yaml
@@ -46,10 +46,15 @@ disk: 512
 # Build time dependencies.
 dependencies:
   python:
-    sphinx: "1.3.6"
+    virtualenv: 15.1.0
 
 # The hooks that will be performed when the package is deployed.
 hooks:
     build: |
-      pip install git+https://github.com/fabpot/sphinx-php.git
+      virtualenv .virtualenv
+      . .virtualenv/bin/activate
+      # Platform.sh currently sets PIP_USER=1.
+      export PIP_USER=
+      pip install pip==9.0.1 wheel==0.29.0
+      pip install -r requirements.txt
       make -C _build html
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..80842e2e4b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+alabaster==0.7.9
+Babel==2.3.4
+docutils==0.13.1
+imagesize==0.7.1
+Jinja2==2.9.4
+MarkupSafe==0.23
+Pygments==2.2.0
+pytz==2016.10
+requests==2.12.5
+six==1.10.0
+snowballstemmer==1.2.1
+Sphinx==1.5.2
+git+https://github.com/fabpot/sphinx-php.git@7312eccce9465640752e51373a480da700e02345#egg_name=sphinx-php
+