@tanwarsh can you elaborate on why the pinning of pip is necessary? If it's necessary in CI, is it also necessary for users of OpenFL? Also - PyTorch 2.7 was just released today. It might be worth just jumping straight to that.

@psfoley, Thanks for the review.
I have updated version to 2.7.0.

Pinning pip version is necessary because of issue logged here #1441.

We can't rely on users to use a specific pip version. My recommendation would be to add @kta-intel's patch directly before the PyTorchDataLoader import; that way we maintain compatibility across all PyTorch and pip versions. No user modifications are required:

#openfl/federated/__init__.py
...
if util.find_spec("torch") is not None:
    os.environ["SETUPTOOLS_USE_DISTUTILS"] = "stdlib"
    import sys
    import typing_extensions
    sys.modules["pip._vendor.typing_extensions"] = typing_extensions
    from openfl.federated.data import PyTorchDataLoader
    from openfl.federated.task import PyTorchTaskRunner
...

Tested this and confirmed working with PyTorch 2.6.0 and pip 25.0.1, as well as PyTorch 2.4.1 and pip 24.1.2

As an aside, I was not able to install Pytorch 2.7 with Python 3.10. Anyone else facing this issue?

We can't rely on users to use a specific pip version. My recommendation would be to add @kta-intel's patch directly before the PyTorchDataLoader import; that way we maintain compatibility across all PyTorch and pip versions. No user modifications are required:

#openfl/federated/__init__.py
...
if util.find_spec("torch") is not None:
    os.environ["SETUPTOOLS_USE_DISTUTILS"] = "stdlib"
    import sys
    import typing_extensions
    sys.modules["pip._vendor.typing_extensions"] = typing_extensions
    from openfl.federated.data import PyTorchDataLoader
    from openfl.federated.task import PyTorchTaskRunner
...

Tested this and confirmed working with PyTorch 2.6.0 and pip 25.0.1, as well as PyTorch 2.4.1 and pip 24.1.2

As an aside, I was not able to install Pytorch 2.7 with Python 3.10. Anyone else facing this issue?

@psfoley, I have added the patch.

I am able to install Pytorch 2.7 with Python 3.10.

Approved, but please wait for the PQ pipeline to be stabilized before merging into develop: https://github.com/securefederatedai/openfl/actions/workflows/pq_pipeline.yml

@teoparvanov, for version >=2.5.0 the file are no longer generated by PyTorch in tmp folder and hence the pipeline was failing. Added code to omit file check in tmp folder.