Python - Mac M1 - ImportError: cannot import name '_message' from 'google.protobuf.pyext'

[Laurens-T]

What version of protobuf and what language are you using?
Version: 4.22 (but I have the same issue with 3.20.3)
Language: Python

What operating system (Linux, Windows, ...) and version?
MacOS Ventura 13.2.1, Apple M1 Pro

What runtime / compiler are you using (e.g., python version or gcc version)
Python 3.11 (or any python version from 3.7-3.11)

gcc:

Apple clang version 14.0.0 (clang-1400.0.29.202)
Target: arm64-apple-darwin22.3.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin

What did you do?

➜  python --version
Python 3.11.0

➜  python -m venv venv
➜  source venv/bin/activate

(venv) ➜  pip install -U pip protobuf
Collecting protobuf
  Downloading protobuf-4.22.0-cp37-abi3-macosx_10_9_universal2.whl (397 kB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 397.2/397.2 kB 2.6 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Installing collected packages: protobuf
Successfully installed protobuf-4.22.0

[notice] A new release of pip available: 22.3 -> 23.0.1
[notice] To update, run: pip install --upgrade pip

(venv) ➜  python -c "from google.protobuf.pyext import _message"
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'google.protobuf.pyext._message'

What did you expect to see
A successful import.

What did you see instead?
ImportError: cannot import name '_message' from 'google.protobuf.pyext'

Anything else we should know about your project / environment
No

Previous issue
It is basically the same issue as I had 2 years ago: #8820.

The workarounds in that issue do still work.

[haberman]

This is expected. As of release 4.21.x we no longer ship the google.protobuf.pyext._message module. The native module is now google._upb._message. More info here: https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/tree/main/python#implementation-backends

But users should not be directly importing any of the private modules (ones beginning with an underscore).