'hf' is not recognized as an internal or external command

[qianyun210603]

Describe the bug

I installed huggingface_hub 0.34.3 via conda and try hf download but it compains hf is not is not recognized as an internal or external command.

(default) D:\Documents>hf
'hf' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

I also tried old huggingface-cli command, it gets recognized but printed a warning to ask me use hf.

(default) D:\Documents>huggingface-cli
⚠️  Warning: huggingface-cli is deprecated. Use hf instead.
usage: huggingface-cli <command> [<args>]

positional arguments:
  {download,upload,repo-files,env,login,whoami,logout,auth,repo,lfs-enable-largefiles,lfs-multipart-upload,scan-cache,delete-cache,tag,version,upload-large-folder}
                        huggingface-cli command helpers
    download            Download files from the Hub
    upload              Upload a file or a folder to a repo on the Hub
    repo-files          Manage files in a repo on the Hub
    env                 Print information about the environment.
    login               Log in using a token from huggingface.co/settings/tokens
    whoami              Find out which huggingface.co account you are logged in as.
    logout              Log out
    auth                Other authentication related commands
    repo                {create} Commands to interact with your huggingface.co repos.
    lfs-enable-largefiles
                        Configure your repository to enable upload of files > 5GB.
    scan-cache          Scan cache directory.
    delete-cache        Delete revisions from the cache directory.
    tag                 (create, list, delete) tags for a repo in the hub
    version             Print information about the huggingface-cli version.
    upload-large-folder
                        Upload a large folder to a repo on the Hub

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit

Reproduction

Just install via conda and then type hf in CMD prompt.

Logs

System info

(This is actually output from `huggingface-cli env` as `hf` is not recognized.
- huggingface_hub version: 0.34.3
- Platform: Windows-11-10.0.26100-SP0
- Python version: 3.12.9
- Running in iPython ?: No
- Running in notebook ?: No
- Running in Google Colab ?: No
- Running in Google Colab Enterprise ?: No
- Token path ?: F:\huggingface\token
- Has saved token ?: False
- Configured git credential helpers: manager
- FastAI: N/A
- Tensorflow: N/A
- Torch: 2.8.0+cu129
- Jinja2: 3.1.6
- Graphviz: N/A
- keras: N/A
- Pydot: N/A
- Pillow: 11.3.0
- hf_transfer: N/A
- gradio: N/A
- tensorboard: 2.6.2.2
- numpy: 2.2.6
- pydantic: N/A
- aiohttp: 3.12.15
- hf_xet: 1.1.5
- ENDPOINT: https://hf-mirror.com
- HF_HUB_CACHE: F:\huggingface\hub
- HF_ASSETS_CACHE: F:\huggingface\assets
- HF_TOKEN_PATH: F:\huggingface\token
- HF_STORED_TOKENS_PATH: F:\huggingface\stored_tokens
- HF_HUB_OFFLINE: False
- HF_HUB_DISABLE_TELEMETRY: False
- HF_HUB_DISABLE_PROGRESS_BARS: None
- HF_HUB_DISABLE_SYMLINKS_WARNING: False
- HF_HUB_DISABLE_EXPERIMENTAL_WARNING: False
- HF_HUB_DISABLE_IMPLICIT_TOKEN: False
- HF_HUB_ENABLE_HF_TRANSFER: False
- HF_HUB_ETAG_TIMEOUT: 10
- HF_HUB_DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT: 10

[hanouticelina]

Hi @qianyun210603,
thanks for reporting and sorry about the inconvenience. I couldn't reproduce on my side (I'm on MacOS). I'm not very familiar with Windows but this is might be because either PATH or the hf.exe entry point not being created, you can try debugging by checking if the executable exist in your env:

# in your env
echo %CONDA_PREFIX%
dir "%CONDA_PREFIX%\Scripts\hf.exe"

if it's missing, a solution would be to regenerate the cli entry points

conda install -c conda-forge --force-reinstall huggingface_hub=0.34.3 -y

[qianyun210603]

Hi @hanouticelina,

Thanks for checking. I checked the %CONDA_PREFIX%\Scripts\hf.exe and I found that instead of having a windows .exe (or .bat, .ps1 etc), it actually provides a text hf file without extension but with shebang #!/bin/sh. So it seems the conda package doesn't properly identify the OS.
Retried with pip, I successfully get hf.exe in %CONDA_PREFIX%\Scripts\hf.exe.

So, the question now is, is it possible to let conda package properly identify the Windows OS and provide correct CLI tool?

[Wauplin]

Gentle ping to @BastianZim @setu4993. Would you be able to help on this issue? Looks like hf is not been correctly installed with conda on Windows (related to #3229)

[BastianZim]

Ahh that's a funny one. We define the CLI entry points here: https://github.com/conda-forge/huggingface_hub-feedstock/blob/7536c6c16f089b14faab22035cfc63e151f70417/recipe/meta.yaml#L17 where we still have the old one.
We test that the CLI is working here: https://github.com/conda-forge/huggingface_hub-feedstock/blob/7536c6c16f089b14faab22035cfc63e151f70417/recipe/meta.yaml#L43 but since the old command refers to the new one instead of failing it was never caught in the tests.

Quick question before I fix this: is there a better CLI command that we can use for testing than --help?

[setu4993]

Nice catch.

@Wauplin @BastianZim : Created this PR which should help resolve this issue: conda-forge/huggingface_hub-feedstock#158

I think just --help is enough, but I also added env. Others seem like they'd be better off with authentication (or atleast FS access).

[Wauplin]

Thanks @setu4993! Testing --help and env is far enough yes! Homebrew does a similar test as well.

[setu4993]

The new version with the fix was published >a day ago: https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/huggingface_hub/files

[hanouticelina]

thank you @setu4993 for fixing this!
@qianyun210603 I'm closing this issue but feel free to reopen it if you're still encountering the same issue 🤗

[qianyun210603]

Tried and it works now. Thanks all for the quick fix!

[mrburks]

so what is the command to get it to work?

[mrburks]

and where do you put it, once downloaded