Developing the next-generation adapters library

[calpt]

Update: See comment below and release announcement: https://adapterhub.ml/blog/2023/11/introducing-adapters/.

As you might have noticed in the past weeks and months as a user of AdapterHub/ adapter-transformers, updates from our side (and replies to opened issues) have been quite scarce. This is because we've been busy working on a major revamp of our library, which will be officially released in the coming weeks. This post shall give you a preview on what's coming.

What's changing?

• We've fundamentally refactored our code and they way adapters are integrated into Transformer models. Most importantly, this means the new library will no longer be a fork of HuggingFace's Transformers, but a separate add-on package. We hope to alleviate all sorts of issues related to the previous forking strategy with this change.
• New model integrations, adapter methods and more...
• A new name: To highlight the fundamental library design changes, we're giving the new library a new name: Adapters. Thus, the adapters package will replace the adapter-transformers package in the future.

For a detailed breakdown on all breaking changes, check out https://docs.adapterhub.ml/transitioning.html.

Where can I test it?

The current development version of Adapters is available here: https://github.com/adapter-hub/adapter-transformers/tree/adapters. We're in the process of adding more features before releasing it in the main branch of this repo in the coming weeks. Now on the main branch (see comment).

How can I help?

We've updated our contributing guide as well as the guides for adding new model integrations and adding new adapter methods on the development branch. We're always happy for your help!

What are the next steps?

• Finalizing all new features of the new library and fixing remaining bugs
• Adapters will be officially released in this repo and as package on PyPI, replacing the current adapter-transformers library (keeping the old library in an archived version)
• In parallel, we'll try to catch up on open issues and bug reports. Thanks for all your patience in this regard!

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Please feel free to comment any of your thoughts on all of this below :)

Current team: @hSterz, @lenglaender, @TimoImhof, @calpt

[cody-moveworks]

Hi! Is there a rough ETA for when the new adapters package will be released? Very excited to use this new package :)

[hSterz]

Hi @cody-moveworks, we plan to release the adapters package within the next 2 weeks.

[Eugleo]

Hey! Thanks a lot for the library. Any updates on this front?

[calpt]

Hey all, just as a quick update:

• the default branch of this repo now holds the codebase of the new Adapters library
• the repo has been renamed to "adapters"
• the live docs at https://docs.adapterhub.ml are now up-to-date with the new Adapters library
• preview builds of Adapters are available on PyPI:
  pip install adapters
• the old adapter-transformers codebase has been moved to https://github.com/adapter-hub/adapter-transformers-legacy
• You can find more information on transitioning from adapter-transformers here: https://docs.adapterhub.ml/transitioning.html

Once a few last PRs are merged, we will make a bigger release announcement of the new library in the next week, along with the new system report paper for the Adapters library.

[calpt]

Closing this with the official release of Adapters. Please read the full announcement here: https://adapterhub.ml/blog/2023/11/introducing-adapters/