topic Re: Issue Importing transformers Library on Databricks in Machine Learning

Issue Importing transformers Library on Databricks

Deniz_Bilgin — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 12:04:09 GMT

I'm experiencing an issue when trying to import the "transformers" library in a Databricks notebook. The import statement causes the notebook to hang indefinitely without any error messages. The library works perfectly on my local machine using Anaconda.

Does anyone experience the same problem?

Re: Issue Importing transformers Library on Databricks

db_pv1504 — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:07:55 GMT

I am also facing this issue with 17.2/17.1 ml runtime with no changes to the environment. Only options I found was upgrading transformers to the latest version or revert back to 16.4 lts

Re: Issue Importing transformers Library on Databricks

nayan_wylde — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:16:31 GMT

@Deniz_Bilgin yeah some packages are not compatible with runtime.

Use a Stable Version
Try installing a known working version:

%pip install transformers==4.41.2

Dependency Issues:
Conflicts with preinstalled libraries like urllib3 (e.g., version 2.1.0) in Databricks Runtime 13.3 can break transformers.
Add retry logic to handle intermittent import failures:

import time max_attempts = 3 attempt = 0 while attempt < max_attempts: try: import transformers break except ImportError as e: attempt += 1 print(f"Attempt {attempt} failed. Retrying...") time.sleep(10)