Loosening protobuf version limit breaking downstream packages

[psfoley]

Describe the bug
The recent removal of the protobuf version version limit (#712) has breaking implications for downstream packages dependent on tensorboardX and protobuf<3.20.

Minimal runnable code to reproduce the behavior

$ pip install tensorboardX==2.6.2
$ pip install protobuf<3.20

$ python
>>>  import tensorboardX
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/lab_phe3223/anaconda3/envs/tensorboard/lib/python3.8/site-packages/tensorboardX/__init__.py", line 5, in <module>
    from .torchvis import TorchVis
  File "/home/lab_phe3223/anaconda3/envs/tensorboard/lib/python3.8/site-packages/tensorboardX/torchvis.py", line 10, in <module>
    from .writer import SummaryWriter
  File "/home/lab_phe3223/anaconda3/envs/tensorboard/lib/python3.8/site-packages/tensorboardX/writer.py", line 16, in <module>
    from .comet_utils import CometLogger
  File "/home/lab_phe3223/anaconda3/envs/tensorboard/lib/python3.8/site-packages/tensorboardX/comet_utils.py", line 7, in <module>
    from .summary import _clean_tag
  File "/home/lab_phe3223/anaconda3/envs/tensorboard/lib/python3.8/site-packages/tensorboardX/summary.py", line 12, in <module>
    from .proto.summary_pb2 import Summary
  File "/home/lab_phe3223/anaconda3/envs/tensorboard/lib/python3.8/site-packages/tensorboardX/proto/summary_pb2.py", line 5, in <module>
    from google.protobuf.internal import builder as _builder
ImportError: cannot import name 'builder' from 'google.protobuf.internal' (/home/lab_phe3223/anaconda3/envs/tensorboard/lib/python3.8/site-packages/google/protobuf/internal/__init__.py) 
...

[ryadom]

It broke our build too.
Pinning tensorboardX==2.5.1
solves this issue for
protobuf>=3.8.0,<=3.20.1

[lanpa]

Hi @psfoley, does v2.6.2.2 work for you?

[psfoley]

Thanks @lanpa for working to address this! Manually installing v2.6.2.2 does fix the problem, but for prior releases of our package we had only required tensorboardX, so v2.6.2.1 is still getting installed because doesn't have the protobuf>3.20 limit. Is there any chance it would be possible to revoke the 2.6.2.1 and 2.6.2 releases from PyPi?

[lanpa]

Hi @psfoley, I have yanked v2.6.2.1. Now pip install tensorboardX should install v2.6.2.2 by default. Would you help me verify?

[psfoley]

Thanks @lanpa. We have protobuf 3.19 as a requirement in our framework, so now v2.6.2 is installed instead of v2.6.2.1 (because 2.6.2 is where the protobuf requirement was loosened). If v2.6.2 is yanked as well, everything should work again. Really appreciate all your help with this!

[lanpa]

I have just yanked v2.6.2! Sorry for the inconvenience. Please try again.

[psfoley]

That fixed it! Thanks so much @lanpa!