[Upgrade to SWIG 4.4] DeprecationWarning: builtin type has no __module__ attribute

[founder-investwise]

When using faiss-cpu with Python 3.12, there are deprecation warnings from SWIG about builtin types not having module attributes:

<frozen importlib._bootstrap>:488: DeprecationWarning: builtin type SwigPyPacked has no __module__ attribute
<frozen importlib._bootstrap>:488: DeprecationWarning: builtin type SwigPyObject has no __module__ attribute
<frozen importlib._bootstrap>:488: DeprecationWarning: builtin type swigvarlink has no __module__ attribute

This is a known issue in SWIG being tracked in swig/swig#2881. The warnings appear because SWIG is not setting the module attribute on its builtin types.

Once SWIG 4.4 is released with the fix, faiss should update to use the newer SWIG version to resolve these warnings.

[mnorris11]

Thanks for reporting it. We do want to keep track of version upgrades. I added it to the tracking board but unsure we can get to it in Q3.

[onestardao]

yup, swig strikes again.

these __module__ warnings are just deprecation heads-ups from Python 3.12 — swig 4.1.x didn’t set that attr on its wrapped types, and now python wants everyone to behave like grownups.

no action needed on your side. just noise, not breakage.

the real fix is upstream in swig: swig/swig#2881
once they push 4.4 with the patch, faiss can bump it and this’ll go quiet.

until then, it's harmless — annoying but safe to ignore unless your linter’s strict.