RuntimeError: module compiled against API version 0xe but this version of numpy is 0xd when importing sentence-transformers

Question

I want to use sentence-transformers. To do this, I installed sentence-transformers as follows:

pip install sentence-transformers

Then, I did my import as follows:

from sentence_transformers import SentenceTransformer

Which resulted in the following error:

RuntimeError: module compiled against API version 0xe but this version of numpy is 0xd

The entire Traceback is:

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "<ipython-input-112-dbcd88385343>", line 1, in <module>
    from sentence_transformers import SentenceTransformer

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\sentence_transformers\__init__.py", line 3, in <module>
    from .datasets import SentencesDataset, ParallelSentencesDataset

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\sentence_transformers\datasets\__init__.py", line 3, in <module>
    from .ParallelSentencesDataset import ParallelSentencesDataset

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\sentence_transformers\datasets\ParallelSentencesDataset.py", line 4, in <module>
    from .. import SentenceTransformer

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\sentence_transformers\SentenceTransformer.py", line 27, in <module>
    from .models import Transformer, Pooling, Dense

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\sentence_transformers\models\__init__.py", line 1, in <module>
    from .Transformer import Transformer

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\sentence_transformers\models\Transformer.py", line 2, in <module>
    from transformers import AutoModel, AutoTokenizer, AutoConfig

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\transformers\file_utils.py", line 1985, in __getattr__
    value = getattr(module, name)

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\transformers\file_utils.py", line 1984, in __getattr__
    module = self._get_module(self._class_to_module[name])

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\transformers\file_utils.py", line 1993, in _get_module
    return importlib.import_module("." + module_name, self.__name__)

  File "C:\Users\20200016\Anaconda3\lib\importlib\__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\transformers\models\auto\modeling_auto.py", line 24, in <module>
    from ..albert.modeling_albert import (

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\transformers\models\albert\modeling_albert.py", line 51, in <module>
    from .configuration_albert import AlbertConfig

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\transformers\models\albert\configuration_albert.py", line 21, in <module>
    from ...onnx import OnnxConfig

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\transformers\onnx\__init__.py", line 17, in <module>
    from .convert import export, validate_model_outputs

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\transformers\onnx\convert.py", line 23, in <module>
    from .. import PreTrainedModel, PreTrainedTokenizer, TensorType, TFPreTrainedModel, is_torch_available

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\transformers\file_utils.py", line 1984, in __getattr__
    module = self._get_module(self._class_to_module[name])

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\transformers\file_utils.py", line 1993, in _get_module
    return importlib.import_module("." + module_name, self.__name__)

  File "C:\Users\20200016\Anaconda3\lib\importlib\__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)

  File "C:\Users\20200016\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python38\site-packages\transformers\modeling_tf_utils.py", line 27, in <module>
    import tensorflow as tf

  File "C:\Users\20200016\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\tensorflow\__init__.py", line 37, in <module>
    from tensorflow.python.tools import module_util as _module_util

  File "C:\Users\20200016\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\tensorflow\python\__init__.py", line 37, in <module>
    from tensorflow.python.eager import context

  File "C:\Users\20200016\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\tensorflow\python\eager\context.py", line 35, in <module>
    from tensorflow.python.client import pywrap_tf_session

  File "C:\Users\20200016\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\tensorflow\python\client\pywrap_tf_session.py", line 19, in <module>
    from tensorflow.python.client._pywrap_tf_session import *

ImportError: SystemError: <built-in method __contains__ of dict object at 0x0000021655B72740> returned a result with an error set

I have tried upgrading Numpy:

pip install numpy --upgrade

But this returns:

Requirement already up-to-date: numpy in c:\...\site-packages (1.22.2)

What goes wrong here? And how can I overcome this error?

Answer 1

I have had a similar problem, and in my case upgrading numpy solve it. I checked the requirements.txt for the sentencetransformer but they stated no specific version.

Additionally you can try to install the SentenceTransformer without the dependecies pip install --no-deps sentence-transformers and install them manually afterwards. By downloading the requirements.txt and install it via pip install -r requirements.txt. In this process you can also more easily see whether there are any conflicts with some packages, maybe the information will e.g., help you to figure out which exact numpy version is needed.