Importing from aie.util triggers "Failed to import PyXRT: No module named 'pyxrt', proceeding without runtime libraries." although XRT is neither expected nor needed

[ypapadop-amd]

A message was added that prints

Failed to import PyXRT: No module named 'pyxrt', proceeding without runtime libraries.

if pyxrt is not available.

In my case, pyxrt is neither needed nor installed. I am importing functions and classes that do not need pyxrt.

If pyxrt is installed, then it's loaded even if not used. Depending on the overhead of this, it will increase time to import packages from mlir-aie.

A mechanism is requested that ideally pyxrt is never loaded or at least the message is not displayed.

[jgmelber]

Conflicts with #2606 that @stephenneuendorffer opened and was addressed in #2737

[ypapadop-amd]

Forcing a message at this level and no capability of turning it off creates issues for middleware that uses mlir-aie. Most of the times, there's no control of what the end applications wants to do with the output.

It is also considered an anti-pattern to do heavy operations in __init__.py and have side-effects.

A work-around for this is to have code that redirects stderr:

def suppress_import_pyxrt_msg():
    """Function to suppress pyxrt not found message."""

    import os
    import sys

    stderr_backup = sys.stderr
    sys.stderr = open(os.devnull, "w", encoding="utf-8")

    import aie.utils

    sys.stderr = stderr_backup

and using it as

from utils import suppress_import_pyxrt_msg

suppress_import_pyxrt_msg()

from aie.iron import ...

Solutions that explicitly disable the pyxrt loading and/or the message that use either the existence of some variable name or check for an environment variable would be ok.