Importing baal fails when the transformers optional dep is missing

[hadim]

This is problematic when building the conda package since it does not include the optional dep transformers.

I see two solutions:

• make transformers a required dep
• add a conditional check to https://github.com/ElementAI/baal/blob/26bde3a9ef68454cb2795de3784cde4032fc0391/src/baal/transformers_trainer_wrapper.py so transformers is not imported if missing that way baal can still be used without transformers.

[hadim]

xref with conda-forge/baal-feedstock#1 (comment)

[Dref360]

Hello,
I think transformers is already a required deps.

https://github.com/ElementAI/baal/blob/master/requirements.txt#L13

Is there something that we are missing?

I think setting it as an optional deps would be great.

[hadim]

i said this because of this comment https://github.com/ElementAI/baal/blob/26bde3a9ef68454cb2795de3784cde4032fc0391/src/baal/transformers_trainer_wrapper.py#L6

Is it obsolete?

[Dref360]

Oh right! Yeah I think this comment is obsolete for now. We should assess whether we want transformers as a required deps or not.

Thank you!

[hadim]

Ok let me know when you took a decision for conda-forge/baal-feedstock#1

[Dref360]

I put HF as an optional dependency, do we need to push a new version to fix the conda recipe or it's good now?

[hadim]

A new version must be uploaded to pypi since the source of truth for the code is the sdist archive on pypi (with a sha256 hash). I closed the PR for 1.3.0 on the feedstock and will wait for 1.3.1.