fix dtype equality in case pyarrow is not installed

Author: jorisvandenbossche

pandas/core/arrays/string_.py

@@ -167,7 +167,9 @@ def __eq__(self, other: object) -> bool:
                 return True
             try:
                 other = self.construct_from_string(other)
-            except TypeError:
+            except (TypeError, ImportError):
+                # TypeError if `other` is not a valid string for StringDtype
+                # ImportError if pyarrow is not installed for "string[pyarrow]"
                 return False
         if isinstance(other, type(self)):
             return self.storage == other.storage and self.na_value is other.na_value

pandas/tests/dtypes/test_common.py

@@ -3,8 +3,6 @@
 import numpy as np
 import pytest
 
-from pandas._config import using_string_dtype
-
 import pandas.util._test_decorators as td
 
 from pandas.core.dtypes.astype import astype_array
@@ -130,7 +128,6 @@ def test_dtype_equal(name1, dtype1, name2, dtype2):
         assert not com.is_dtype_equal(dtype1, dtype2)
 
 
-@pytest.mark.xfail(using_string_dtype(), reason="TODO(infer_string)", strict=False)
 @pytest.mark.parametrize("name,dtype", list(dtypes.items()), ids=lambda x: str(x))
 def test_pyarrow_string_import_error(name, dtype):
     # GH-44276