@xenova/transformers vs. @huggingface/transformers npm package

[nzakas]

Question

It's pretty confusing to have both of these on npm. Which are we supposed to use?

Can you please deprecate the one that we aren't supposed to use? (npm deprecate)

[sabman]

I believe @huggingface/transformers is the official one as of now. @xenova/transformers one is still there since a lot of people probably haven't migrated

[nzakas]

That's what I figured. It would be good to have some documentation around that and to deprecate the old package on npm to make it clear.

[sabman]

Another think to point out is
https://github.com/xenova/transformers.js/ redirects to https://github.com/huggingface/transformers.js

I think this is something @xenova would need to do on npm. @xenova let us know if you need anything done that could be PR'd

[nzakas]

Yes, this must be done via npm, either on the webapp or via CLI.

[xenova]

Hi there 👋 Here are the main differences:

• @huggingface/transformers (a.k.a. Transformers.js v3) is the new version of Transformers.js with WebGPU/GPU support (in addition to WASM/CPU support). New models and new features will be added to this package.
• @xenova/transformers (a.k.a. Transformers.js v2) is the older version, with WASM/CPU-only support. It is still being used by many other packages (~100k weekly downloads on NPM), so we'll be helping (and encouraging) users to upgrade if they would like, but the package still functions correctly and users may still want to use it if it suits their needs (e.g., they don't need WebGPU support, or only require a specific feature, like BERT embedding models).

Let me know if you have any questions :)

[nzakas]

@xenova thanks for the explanation. That's helpful. I'd suggest adding this information into both READMEs to help alleviate some of the confusion.

[Ucok23]

thanks for the explanation

Hi there 👋 Here are the main differences:

• @huggingface/transformers (a.k.a. Transformers.js v3) is the new version of Transformers.js with WebGPU/GPU support (in addition to WASM/CPU support). New models and new features will be added to this package.
• @xenova/transformers (a.k.a. Transformers.js v2) is the older version, with WASM/CPU-only support. It is still being used by many other packages (~100k weekly downloads on NPM), so we'll be helping (and encouraging) users to upgrade if they would like, but the package still functions correctly and users may still want to use it if it suits their needs (e.g., they don't need WebGPU support, or only require a specific feature, like BERT embedding models).

Let me know if you have any questions :)