ImportError: cannot import name ‘_unicodefun’ from ‘click’

When running our lint checks with the Python Black package, an error comes up:

ImportError: cannot import name ‘_unicodefun’ from ‘click’ (/Users/robot/.cache/pre-commit/repo3u71ccm2/py_env-python3.9/lib/python3.9/site-packages/click/init.py)`

In researching this, I found the following related issues:

• ImportError: cannot import name ‘_unicodefun’ from ‘click’ #2976
• ImportError: cannot import name ‘_unicodefun’ from ‘click’ #6013

How can I solve this problem? Is this a false positive from the linter? Do I need to modify my code?

Answer

This has been fixed by Black 22.3.0. Versions before that won’t work with click 8.1.0.

Incompatible with click 8.1.0 (ImportError: cannot import name ‘_unicodefun’ from ‘click’) #2964

E.g.: black.yml

          python-version: 3.8
      - name: install black
        run: |
-          pip install black==20.8b1
+          pip install black==22.3.0
      - name: run black
        run: |
          black . --check --line-length 100

https://github.com/Clinical-Genomics/cgbeacon2/pull/221/files

As a workaround, pin click to the last version via pip install --upgrade click==8.0.2.