# Unable to import faiss
**URL:**
**Author:**  [@mkserge](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Fu%2Fmkserge)%5C
**Post date:** [January 29, 2021, 5:56pm UTC](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Ft%2Funable-to-import-faiss%2F3439%2F1 "2021-01-29T17:56:17Z")
Hello,
I am running Transformers on a Mac OS with Python 3.8 in a virtual environment.
I have faiss-cpu 1.7.0 installed in the env.
```bash
(venv) sergey_mkrtchyan transformers (master) $ python
Python 3.8.6 (v3.8.6:db455296be, Sep 23 2020, 13:31:39)
[Clang 6.0 (clang-600.0.57)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>
>>> import faiss
>>> faiss. __version__'1.7.0'
```
However transformers repo is doing an additional check of the version of the package using importlib\_metadata in `transformers/src/file_utils.py` which ends up failing on me with “RagRetriever requires the faiss library but it was not found in your environment.”
```auto
_faiss_available = importlib.util.find_spec("faiss") is not None
try:
_faiss_version = importlib_metadata.version("faiss")
logger.debug(f"Successfully imported faiss version {_faiss_version}")
except importlib_metadata.PackageNotFoundError:
_faiss_available = False
```
This is where it fails, mind you `_faiss_available = importlib.util.find_spec("faiss")` line above works just fine, but fails on the `_faiss_version = importlib_metadata.version("faiss")` line unable to find the faiss package.
Not sure if it’s an issue in the repo or something wrong on my side. Any experience with this?
Thank you!
---
**Author:**  [@akinolawilson](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Fu%2Fakinolawilson)%5C
**Post date:** [February 8, 2021, 5:27pm UTC](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Ft%2Funable-to-import-faiss%2F3439%2F2 "2021-02-08T17:27:47Z")
I am facing the same issue. No version of the faiss library is being recognized as present in the environment I am running (installed through conda). I did solve this problem before, but I remember it being a pain; I built the library from source but had to deal with many issues along the way.
Edit:
I was just able to get it to be recognised.
Solution:
if you are able to import the library ( from terminal start python):
python
import faiss
print(faiss)
> > /home/akinwilson/miniconda3/envs/envRag/lib/python3.7/site-packages/faiss/ **init**.py
take the path;
/home/akinwilson/miniconda3/envs/envRag/lib/python3.7/site-packages/faiss
then in your bashrc file:
nano ~/.bashrc
add this line to the end of the file:
export PYTHONPATH=$HOME/miniconda3/lib/python3.8/site-packages/faiss
Note that I have changed the home directory to a variable.
save it.
Then finally, set the bashrc file as source again to reload the paths;
source ~/.bashrc
Restart any virtual environment and everything should work fine.
---
**Author:**  [@mkserge](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Fu%2Fmkserge)%5C
**Post date:** [February 17, 2021, 8:07pm UTC](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Ft%2Funable-to-import-faiss%2F3439%2F3 "2021-02-17T20:07:58Z")
Thanks, just to let you know, this has been fixed on the master branch now.
```auto
_faiss_available = importlib.util.find_spec("faiss") is not None
try:
_faiss_version = importlib_metadata.version("faiss")
logger.debug(f"Successfully imported faiss version {_faiss_version}")
except importlib_metadata.PackageNotFoundError:
try:
_faiss_version = importlib_metadata.version("faiss-cpu")
logger.debug(f"Successfully imported faiss version {_faiss_version}")
except importlib_metadata.PackageNotFoundError:
_faiss_available = False
```
---
**Author:**  [@NarenSEG](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Fu%2FNarenSEG)%5C
**Post date:** [March 12, 2024, 8:16pm UTC](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Ft%2Funable-to-import-faiss%2F3439%2F4 "2024-03-12T20:16:40Z")
This issue still persists (if you have faiss-gpu installed)
I think it should be updated as:
```auto
# We need to check all three `faiss` and `faiss-cpu` and `faiss-gpu`
try:
_faiss_version = importlib.metadata.version("faiss")
logger.debug(f"Successfully imported faiss version {_faiss_version}")
except importlib.metadata.PackageNotFoundError:
try:
_faiss_version = importlib.metadata.version("faiss-cpu")
logger.debug(f"Successfully imported faiss version {_faiss_version}")
except importlib.metadata.PackageNotFoundError:
try:
_faiss_version = importlib.metadata.version("faiss-gpu")
logger.debug(f"Successfully imported faiss version {_faiss_version}")
except importlib.metadata.PackageNotFoundError:
_faiss_available = False
```
---
**Author:**  [@nielsr](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Fu%2Fnielsr)%5C
**Post date:** [March 13, 2024, 7:38am UTC](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Ft%2Funable-to-import-faiss%2F3439%2F5 "2024-03-13T07:38:54Z")
Would be great to open a PR 🙂