kfp.compiler.Compiler.compile() failed with Bazel due to kfp.CHECK_TYPE not found

What steps did you take:

I use Bazel to compile the pipeline. It has been working for kfp==1.0.0 but failed for kfp>=1.1.2.

Environment:

python==3.8.5 bazel==3.2.0

KFP SDK version: kfp==1.1.2 as well as kfp==1.3.0

Anything else you would like to add:

Traceback from kfp==1.1.2

.../pypi_kfp/kfp/compiler/compiler.py", line 917, in compile
    type_check_old_value = kfp.TYPE_CHECK
AttributeError: module 'kfp' has no attribute 'TYPE_CHECK'

I suspect that the pkgutil style namespace packaging breaks the import (at least in Bazel) https://github.com/kubeflow/pipelines/blob/1.1.2/sdk/python/kfp/__init__.py#L17

/kind bug /area sdk

[cristifalcas]

This error comes from 2 things:

• rules_python adds an __init__.py for each module
• kfp module depends on kfp-pipeline-spec, which has a folder kfp

Rules python will make that kfp folder from kfp-pipeline-spec a module and, after that, python will try to load ‘TYPE_CHECK’ from there and everything fails.

As a workaround you need to delete the generated __init__.py file from bazel path.

Something like this before loading the kfp module:

import sys

for module_path in sys.path:
    if module_path.endswith("nameused_kfp_pipeline_spec"):
        os.remove(f"{module_path}/kfp/__init__.py")

replace the path with whatever you have named your pip_parse/pip_install call in WORKSPACE.

Or open an issue with rules_python for a proper fix

[pyang-aurora]

Given that the original goal for adopting namespace package style is to ensure the protobuf generated python modules can be accessed under the same kfp namespace, would it be possible to bundle them at release time?