How to cure Google Colab with miniconda installed and get on import ModuleNotFoundError?
Question:
I have used Google Colab for more than half a year successfully for a special application. In the beginning of my Colab-notebook script I install conda and use conda-forge for installing a key Python package. At the beginning of this year 2023 I became aware of the Colab update to use Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and made some updates of scripts and all worked again.
A few weeks ago, around 2023-03-09, something happened and the key package could still be imported and shows up using "!conda list", but the package cannot be imported. The error message is: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named….
I tested to install the package locally on a VBox VM with the same Ubuntu ver as Google Colab 20.04 and also same Python 3.8.16 and conda 23.1.0 version and works just fine.
So I guess the problem is with Gooble Colab and its environment, but what can be done?
Answers:
The reason to the problem is that Google Colab was updated to run Python 3.9 default, while before 3.8. The installation I had in my script was for Miniconda 3.8 version. That lead to a situation where my package of interest was installed in the wrong environment. Not all packages has this sensitivity to mis-match of Miniconda version but this package had!
Thus, important to have the Miniconda of the same Python version as the base environment.
I have used Google Colab for more than half a year successfully for a special application. In the beginning of my Colab-notebook script I install conda and use conda-forge for installing a key Python package. At the beginning of this year 2023 I became aware of the Colab update to use Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and made some updates of scripts and all worked again.
A few weeks ago, around 2023-03-09, something happened and the key package could still be imported and shows up using "!conda list", but the package cannot be imported. The error message is: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named….
I tested to install the package locally on a VBox VM with the same Ubuntu ver as Google Colab 20.04 and also same Python 3.8.16 and conda 23.1.0 version and works just fine.
So I guess the problem is with Gooble Colab and its environment, but what can be done?
The reason to the problem is that Google Colab was updated to run Python 3.9 default, while before 3.8. The installation I had in my script was for Miniconda 3.8 version. That lead to a situation where my package of interest was installed in the wrong environment. Not all packages has this sensitivity to mis-match of Miniconda version but this package had!
Thus, important to have the Miniconda of the same Python version as the base environment.