`spacy` fails to specify `click` as a dependency even though it is being used and thus fresh install + import fails

[mart-r]

How to reproduce the behaviour

python -m pip install spacy
python -c "import spacy"  # results in failure

Your Environment

• Operating System: MacOS / Ubuntu (CI)
• Python Version Used: 3.11
• spaCy Version Used: 3.8.14
• Environment Information: Brand new venv based environment

The output in fresh install of env

((.venv) ) martratas@Marts-MacBook-Pro 2026_05_27_spacy_click % pip freeze
((.venv) ) martratas@Marts-MacBook-Pro 2026_05_27_spacy_click % pip --version
pip 26.1.1 from /Users/martratas/Documents/CogStack/.MedCAT.nosync/monorepo-nlp/medcat-v2/.temp/2026_05_27_spacy_click/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/pip (python 3.12)
((.venv) ) martratas@Marts-MacBook-Pro 2026_05_27_spacy_click % python -m pip install spacy
Collecting spacy
  Using cached spacy-3.8.14-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.metadata (28 kB)
Collecting spacy-legacy<3.1.0,>=3.0.11 (from spacy)
  Using cached spacy_legacy-3.0.12-py2.py3-none-any.whl.metadata (2.8 kB)
Collecting spacy-loggers<2.0.0,>=1.0.0 (from spacy)
  Using cached spacy_loggers-1.0.5-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (23 kB)
Collecting murmurhash<1.1.0,>=0.28.0 (from spacy)
  Using cached murmurhash-1.0.15-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.metadata (2.3 kB)
Collecting cymem<2.1.0,>=2.0.2 (from spacy)
  Using cached cymem-2.0.13-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.metadata (9.7 kB)
Collecting preshed<3.1.0,>=3.0.2 (from spacy)
  Using cached preshed-3.0.13-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.metadata (5.2 kB)
Collecting thinc<8.4.0,>=8.3.12 (from spacy)
  Using cached thinc-8.3.13-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.metadata (14 kB)
Collecting wasabi<1.2.0,>=0.9.1 (from spacy)
  Using cached wasabi-1.1.3-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (28 kB)
Collecting srsly<3.0.0,>=2.5.3 (from spacy)
  Using cached srsly-2.5.3-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.metadata (19 kB)
Collecting catalogue<2.1.0,>=2.0.6 (from spacy)
  Using cached catalogue-2.0.10-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (14 kB)
Collecting weasel<2.0.0,>=1.0.0 (from spacy)
  Using cached weasel-1.0.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (4.6 kB)
Collecting confection<2.0.0,>=1.3.2 (from spacy)
  Using cached confection-1.3.3-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (19 kB)
Collecting typer<1.0.0,>=0.3.0 (from spacy)
  Using cached typer-0.26.2-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (16 kB)
Collecting tqdm<5.0.0,>=4.38.0 (from spacy)
  Using cached tqdm-4.67.3-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (57 kB)
Collecting numpy>=1.19.0 (from spacy)
  Downloading numpy-2.4.6-cp312-cp312-macosx_14_0_arm64.whl.metadata (6.6 kB)
Collecting requests<3.0.0,>=2.13.0 (from spacy)
  Downloading requests-2.34.2-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (4.8 kB)
Collecting pydantic<3.0.0,>=2.0.0 (from spacy)
  Using cached pydantic-2.13.4-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (109 kB)
Collecting jinja2 (from spacy)
  Using cached jinja2-3.1.6-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (2.9 kB)
Collecting setuptools (from spacy)
  Using cached setuptools-82.0.1-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (6.5 kB)
Collecting packaging>=20.0 (from spacy)
  Using cached packaging-26.2-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (3.5 kB)
Collecting annotated-types>=0.6.0 (from pydantic<3.0.0,>=2.0.0->spacy)
  Using cached annotated_types-0.7.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (15 kB)
Collecting pydantic-core==2.46.4 (from pydantic<3.0.0,>=2.0.0->spacy)
  Using cached pydantic_core-2.46.4-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.metadata (6.6 kB)
Collecting typing-extensions>=4.14.1 (from pydantic<3.0.0,>=2.0.0->spacy)
  Using cached typing_extensions-4.15.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (3.3 kB)
Collecting typing-inspection>=0.4.2 (from pydantic<3.0.0,>=2.0.0->spacy)
  Using cached typing_inspection-0.4.2-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (2.6 kB)
Collecting charset_normalizer<4,>=2 (from requests<3.0.0,>=2.13.0->spacy)
  Using cached charset_normalizer-3.4.7-cp312-cp312-macosx_10_13_universal2.whl.metadata (40 kB)
Collecting idna<4,>=2.5 (from requests<3.0.0,>=2.13.0->spacy)
  Downloading idna-3.16-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (6.4 kB)
Collecting urllib3<3,>=1.26 (from requests<3.0.0,>=2.13.0->spacy)
  Using cached urllib3-2.7.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (6.9 kB)
Collecting certifi>=2023.5.7 (from requests<3.0.0,>=2.13.0->spacy)
  Downloading certifi-2026.5.20-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (2.5 kB)
Collecting blis<1.4.0,>=1.3.0 (from thinc<8.4.0,>=8.3.12->spacy)
  Using cached blis-1.3.3-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.metadata (7.5 kB)
Collecting shellingham>=1.3.0 (from typer<1.0.0,>=0.3.0->spacy)
  Using cached shellingham-1.5.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl.metadata (3.5 kB)
Collecting rich>=13.8.0 (from typer<1.0.0,>=0.3.0->spacy)
  Using cached rich-15.0.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (18 kB)
Collecting annotated-doc>=0.0.2 (from typer<1.0.0,>=0.3.0->spacy)
  Using cached annotated_doc-0.0.4-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (6.6 kB)
Collecting cloudpathlib>=0.7.0 (from weasel<2.0.0,>=1.0.0->spacy)
  Using cached cloudpathlib-0.24.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (16 kB)
Collecting smart-open>=5.2.1 (from weasel<2.0.0,>=1.0.0->spacy)
  Downloading smart_open-7.6.1-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (25 kB)
Collecting httpx>=0.24.0 (from weasel<2.0.0,>=1.0.0->spacy)
  Using cached httpx-0.28.1-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (7.1 kB)
Collecting anyio (from httpx>=0.24.0->weasel<2.0.0,>=1.0.0->spacy)
  Using cached anyio-4.13.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (4.5 kB)
Collecting httpcore==1.* (from httpx>=0.24.0->weasel<2.0.0,>=1.0.0->spacy)
  Using cached httpcore-1.0.9-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (21 kB)
Collecting h11>=0.16 (from httpcore==1.*->httpx>=0.24.0->weasel<2.0.0,>=1.0.0->spacy)
  Using cached h11-0.16.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (8.3 kB)
Collecting markdown-it-py>=2.2.0 (from rich>=13.8.0->typer<1.0.0,>=0.3.0->spacy)
  Using cached markdown_it_py-4.2.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (7.4 kB)
Collecting pygments<3.0.0,>=2.13.0 (from rich>=13.8.0->typer<1.0.0,>=0.3.0->spacy)
  Using cached pygments-2.20.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (2.5 kB)
Collecting mdurl~=0.1 (from markdown-it-py>=2.2.0->rich>=13.8.0->typer<1.0.0,>=0.3.0->spacy)
  Using cached mdurl-0.1.2-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (1.6 kB)
Collecting wrapt (from smart-open>=5.2.1->weasel<2.0.0,>=1.0.0->spacy)
  Downloading wrapt-2.2.1-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.metadata (7.4 kB)
Collecting MarkupSafe>=2.0 (from jinja2->spacy)
  Using cached markupsafe-3.0.3-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.metadata (2.7 kB)
Using cached spacy-3.8.14-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (6.0 MB)
Using cached catalogue-2.0.10-py3-none-any.whl (17 kB)
Using cached confection-1.3.3-py3-none-any.whl (35 kB)
Using cached cymem-2.0.13-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (42 kB)
Using cached murmurhash-1.0.15-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (27 kB)
Using cached preshed-3.0.13-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (138 kB)
Using cached pydantic-2.13.4-py3-none-any.whl (472 kB)
Using cached pydantic_core-2.46.4-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (2.0 MB)
Downloading requests-2.34.2-py3-none-any.whl (73 kB)
Using cached charset_normalizer-3.4.7-cp312-cp312-macosx_10_13_universal2.whl (311 kB)
Downloading idna-3.16-py3-none-any.whl (74 kB)
Using cached spacy_legacy-3.0.12-py2.py3-none-any.whl (29 kB)
Using cached spacy_loggers-1.0.5-py3-none-any.whl (22 kB)
Using cached srsly-2.5.3-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (658 kB)
Using cached thinc-8.3.13-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (791 kB)
Using cached blis-1.3.3-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (1.2 MB)
Downloading numpy-2.4.6-cp312-cp312-macosx_14_0_arm64.whl (5.2 MB)
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 5.2/5.2 MB 26.2 MB/s  0:00:00
Using cached tqdm-4.67.3-py3-none-any.whl (78 kB)
Using cached typer-0.26.2-py3-none-any.whl (123 kB)
Using cached urllib3-2.7.0-py3-none-any.whl (131 kB)
Using cached wasabi-1.1.3-py3-none-any.whl (27 kB)
Using cached weasel-1.0.0-py3-none-any.whl (50 kB)
Using cached annotated_doc-0.0.4-py3-none-any.whl (5.3 kB)
Using cached annotated_types-0.7.0-py3-none-any.whl (13 kB)
Downloading certifi-2026.5.20-py3-none-any.whl (134 kB)
Using cached cloudpathlib-0.24.0-py3-none-any.whl (63 kB)
Using cached httpx-0.28.1-py3-none-any.whl (73 kB)
Using cached httpcore-1.0.9-py3-none-any.whl (78 kB)
Using cached h11-0.16.0-py3-none-any.whl (37 kB)
Using cached packaging-26.2-py3-none-any.whl (100 kB)
Using cached rich-15.0.0-py3-none-any.whl (310 kB)
Using cached pygments-2.20.0-py3-none-any.whl (1.2 MB)
Using cached markdown_it_py-4.2.0-py3-none-any.whl (91 kB)
Using cached mdurl-0.1.2-py3-none-any.whl (10.0 kB)
Using cached shellingham-1.5.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl (9.8 kB)
Downloading smart_open-7.6.1-py3-none-any.whl (64 kB)
Using cached typing_extensions-4.15.0-py3-none-any.whl (44 kB)
Using cached typing_inspection-0.4.2-py3-none-any.whl (14 kB)
Using cached anyio-4.13.0-py3-none-any.whl (114 kB)
Using cached jinja2-3.1.6-py3-none-any.whl (134 kB)
Using cached markupsafe-3.0.3-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (12 kB)
Using cached setuptools-82.0.1-py3-none-any.whl (1.0 MB)
Downloading wrapt-2.2.1-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (81 kB)
Installing collected packages: wrapt, wasabi, urllib3, typing-extensions, tqdm, spacy-loggers, spacy-legacy, shellingham, setuptools, pygments, packaging, numpy, murmurhash, mdurl, MarkupSafe, idna, h11, cymem, confection, cloudpathlib, charset_normalizer, certifi, catalogue, annotated-types, annotated-doc, typing-inspection, srsly, smart-open, requests, pydantic-core, preshed, markdown-it-py, jinja2, httpcore, blis, anyio, rich, pydantic, httpx, typer, thinc, weasel, spacy
Successfully installed MarkupSafe-3.0.3 annotated-doc-0.0.4 annotated-types-0.7.0 anyio-4.13.0 blis-1.3.3 catalogue-2.0.10 certifi-2026.5.20 charset_normalizer-3.4.7 cloudpathlib-0.24.0 confection-1.3.3 cymem-2.0.13 h11-0.16.0 httpcore-1.0.9 httpx-0.28.1 idna-3.16 jinja2-3.1.6 markdown-it-py-4.2.0 mdurl-0.1.2 murmurhash-1.0.15 numpy-2.4.6 packaging-26.2 preshed-3.0.13 pydantic-2.13.4 pydantic-core-2.46.4 pygments-2.20.0 requests-2.34.2 rich-15.0.0 setuptools-82.0.1 shellingham-1.5.4 smart-open-7.6.1 spacy-3.8.14 spacy-legacy-3.0.12 spacy-loggers-1.0.5 srsly-2.5.3 thinc-8.3.13 tqdm-4.67.3 typer-0.26.2 typing-extensions-4.15.0 typing-inspection-0.4.2 urllib3-2.7.0 wasabi-1.1.3 weasel-1.0.0 wrapt-2.2.1
((.venv) ) martratas@Marts-MacBook-Pro 2026_05_27_spacy_click % python -c "import spacy"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/martratas/Documents/CogStack/.MedCAT.nosync/monorepo-nlp/medcat-v2/.temp/2026_05_27_spacy_click/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/spacy/__init__.py", line 18, in <module>
    from .cli.info import info  # noqa: F401
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/martratas/Documents/CogStack/.MedCAT.nosync/monorepo-nlp/medcat-v2/.temp/2026_05_27_spacy_click/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/spacy/cli/__init__.py", line 4, in <module>
    from . import download as download_module  # noqa: F401
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/martratas/Documents/CogStack/.MedCAT.nosync/monorepo-nlp/medcat-v2/.temp/2026_05_27_spacy_click/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/spacy/cli/download.py", line 21, in <module>
    from ._util import SDIST_SUFFIX, WHEEL_SUFFIX, Arg, Opt, app
  File "/Users/martratas/Documents/CogStack/.MedCAT.nosync/monorepo-nlp/medcat-v2/.temp/2026_05_27_spacy_click/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/spacy/cli/_util.py", line 18, in <module>
    from click import NoSuchOption
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'click'

EDIT:
I think spacy has been relying on typer bringing in click. But as of typer==0.26.x, it looks like typer no longer depends on click. And as such it doesn't get installed anymore.

[mykhailo-saienko]

I can confirm this is a breaking regression on fresh installations/CI runners that triggered between May 20, 2026, and May 27, 2026.

Our CI builds using spacy~=3.8.11 (resolving to 3.8.14) were passing flawlessly up until May 20, but began failing completely today with the ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'click' upon import spacy.

Root Cause / Log Analysis

Comparing our historical successful installation traces to today's failing traces reveals the exact downstream shift:

• Successful trace (May 20): spacy pulled down typer-0.25.1, which explicitly mandated click>=8.2.1.
• Failing trace (May 27): spacy pulled down the newly released typer-0.26.2 because spaCy’s internal constraint is wide (typer<1.0.0,>=0.3.0). In this newer version of typer, click was decoupled and made an optional dependency.

Because import spacy eagerly calls from click import NoSuchOption on initialization inside spacy/cli/_util.py, the entire library crashes on import in a naked environment.

Workaround for other users hitting this today

Until a patch is released, you can fix your environment by explicitly forcing click back into your top-level project dependencies (requirements.txt or pyproject.toml):

click >= 8.2.1

[lczyk]

• related fix we did fix(ci): pin typer<0.26 for validate-hints workflow canonical/chisel-releases#1018