Huggingface tokenizer not able to load model after upgrading python to 3.10 - python-3.x

Question

I just updated Python to version 3.10.8. Note that I use JupyterLab.
I had to re-install a lot of packages, but now I get an error when I try to load the tokenizer of an HuggingFace model
This is my code:
# Import libraries
from transformers import pipeline, AutoTokenizer
# Define checkpoint
model_checkpoint = 'deepset/xlm-roberta-large-squad2'
# Tokenizer
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_checkpoint)
Note that version of transformers is 4.24.0.
This is the error I get:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
AttributeError Traceback (most recent call last)
Cell In [3], line 2
1 # Tokenizer
----> 2 tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_checkpoint)
File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/models/auto/tokenization_auto.py:637, in AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(cls, pretrained_model_name_or_path, *inputs, **kwargs)
635 tokenizer_class_py, tokenizer_class_fast = TOKENIZER_MAPPING[type(config)]
636 if tokenizer_class_fast and (use_fast or tokenizer_class_py is None):
--> 637 return tokenizer_class_fast.from_pretrained(pretrained_model_name_or_path, *inputs, **kwargs)
638 else:
639 if tokenizer_class_py is not None:
File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/tokenization_utils_base.py:1777, in PreTrainedTokenizerBase.from_pretrained(cls, pretrained_model_name_or_path, *init_inputs, **kwargs)
1774 else:
1775 logger.info(f"loading file {file_path} from cache at {resolved_vocab_files[file_id]}")
-> 1777 return cls._from_pretrained(
1778 resolved_vocab_files,
1779 pretrained_model_name_or_path,
1780 init_configuration,
1781 *init_inputs,
1782 use_auth_token=use_auth_token,
1783 cache_dir=cache_dir,
1784 local_files_only=local_files_only,
1785 _commit_hash=commit_hash,
1786 **kwargs,
1787 )
File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/tokenization_utils_base.py:1932, in PreTrainedTokenizerBase._from_pretrained(cls, resolved_vocab_files, pretrained_model_name_or_path, init_configuration, use_auth_token, cache_dir, local_files_only, _commit_hash, *init_inputs, **kwargs)
1930 # Instantiate tokenizer.
1931 try:
-> 1932 tokenizer = cls(*init_inputs, **init_kwargs)
1933 except OSError:
1934 raise OSError(
1935 "Unable to load vocabulary from file. "
1936 "Please check that the provided vocabulary is accessible and not corrupted."
1937 )
File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/models/xlm_roberta/tokenization_xlm_roberta_fast.py:155, in XLMRobertaTokenizerFast.__init__(self, vocab_file, tokenizer_file, bos_token, eos_token, sep_token, cls_token, unk_token, pad_token, mask_token, **kwargs)
139 def __init__(
140 self,
141 vocab_file=None,
(...)
151 ):
152 # Mask token behave like a normal word, i.e. include the space before it
153 mask_token = AddedToken(mask_token, lstrip=True, rstrip=False) if isinstance(mask_token, str) else mask_token
--> 155 super().__init__(
156 vocab_file,
157 tokenizer_file=tokenizer_file,
158 bos_token=bos_token,
159 eos_token=eos_token,
160 sep_token=sep_token,
161 cls_token=cls_token,
162 unk_token=unk_token,
163 pad_token=pad_token,
164 mask_token=mask_token,
165 **kwargs,
166 )
168 self.vocab_file = vocab_file
169 self.can_save_slow_tokenizer = False if not self.vocab_file else True
File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/tokenization_utils_fast.py:114, in PreTrainedTokenizerFast.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)
111 fast_tokenizer = TokenizerFast.from_file(fast_tokenizer_file)
112 elif slow_tokenizer is not None:
113 # We need to convert a slow tokenizer to build the backend
--> 114 fast_tokenizer = convert_slow_tokenizer(slow_tokenizer)
115 elif self.slow_tokenizer_class is not None:
116 # We need to create and convert a slow tokenizer to build the backend
117 slow_tokenizer = self.slow_tokenizer_class(*args, **kwargs)
File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/convert_slow_tokenizer.py:1162, in convert_slow_tokenizer(transformer_tokenizer)
1154 raise ValueError(
1155 f"An instance of tokenizer class {tokenizer_class_name} cannot be converted in a Fast tokenizer instance."
1156 " No converter was found. Currently available slow->fast convertors:"
1157 f" {list(SLOW_TO_FAST_CONVERTERS.keys())}"
1158 )
1160 converter_class = SLOW_TO_FAST_CONVERTERS[tokenizer_class_name]
-> 1162 return converter_class(transformer_tokenizer).converted()
File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/convert_slow_tokenizer.py:438, in SpmConverter.__init__(self, *args)
434 requires_backends(self, "protobuf")
436 super().__init__(*args)
--> 438 from .utils import sentencepiece_model_pb2 as model_pb2
440 m = model_pb2.ModelProto()
441 with open(self.original_tokenizer.vocab_file, "rb") as f:
File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/utils/sentencepiece_model_pb2.py:20
18 from google.protobuf import descriptor as _descriptor
19 from google.protobuf import message as _message
---> 20 from google.protobuf import reflection as _reflection
21 from google.protobuf import symbol_database as _symbol_database
24 # ##protoc_insertion_point(imports)
File /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/google/protobuf/reflection.py:58
56 from google.protobuf.pyext import cpp_message as message_impl
57 else:
---> 58 from google.protobuf.internal import python_message as message_impl
60 # The type of all Message classes.
61 # Part of the public interface, but normally only used by message factories.
62 GeneratedProtocolMessageType = message_impl.GeneratedProtocolMessageType
File /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/google/protobuf/internal/python_message.py:69
66 import copyreg as copyreg
68 # We use "as" to avoid name collisions with variables.
---> 69 from google.protobuf.internal import containers
70 from google.protobuf.internal import decoder
71 from google.protobuf.internal import encoder
File /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/google/protobuf/internal/containers.py:182
177 collections.MutableMapping.register(MutableMapping)
179 else:
180 # In Python 3 we can just use MutableMapping directly, because it defines
181 # __slots__.
--> 182 MutableMapping = collections.MutableMapping
185 class BaseContainer(object):
187 """Base container class."""
AttributeError: module 'collections' has no attribute 'MutableMapping'
I tried several solutions (for example, this and this), but none seem to work.
According to this link, I should change collections.Mapping into collections.abc.Mapping, but I wouldn't knwo where to do it.
Another possible solution is downgrading Python to 3.9, but I would like to keep it as last resort.
How can I fix this?

Answer 1

Turned out it was a problem related to protobuf module. I updated it to the latest version to date (which is 4.21.9).
This changed the error to:
TypeError: Descriptors cannot not be created directly.
If this call came from a _pb2.py file, your generated code is out of date and must be regenerated with protoc >= 3.19.0.
If you cannot immediately regenerate your protos, some other possible workarounds are:
1. Downgrade the protobuf package to 3.20.x or lower.
2. Set PROTOCOL_BUFFERS_PYTHON_IMPLEMENTATION=python (but this will use pure-Python parsing and will be much slower).
More information: https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/news/2022-05-06#python-updates
So I downgraded protobuf to version 3.20.0 and that worked.
For further details, look here.