Incompatibility between odc-stac 0.3.11 and Dask 2025.3.0+ in Pangeo images

[TomPug]

Problem Description

Current Pangeo images contain incompatible versions of odc-stac and dask, which prevents importing and using odc-stac. The specific error is:

ImportError: cannot import name 'quote' from 'dask.base' 
(/srv/conda/envs/notebook/lib/python3.12/site-packages/dask/base.py)

Environment

• Pangeo Image: pangeo/pangeo-notebook (recent version)
• Python: 3.12
• odc-stac: 0.3.11
• dask: 2025.3.0 or higher

Steps to Reproduce

import odc.stac
# ImportError: cannot import name 'quote' from 'dask.base'

Root Cause

Dask version 2025.3.0 removed the quote function from the dask.base module, but odc-stac 0.3.11 still attempts to import it in odc/loader/_builder.py:

from dask.base import quote, tokenize  # This line fails

This is a known issue reported in:

• ImportError: cannot import name 'quote' from 'dask.base' (/opt/conda/lib/python3.11/site-packages/dask/base.py) dask/dask#11843
• Import Error When Running odc.stac on Colab opendatacube/odc-stac#164

Proposed Solutions

Option 1: Update odc-stac (Recommended)

Update to odc-stac 0.4.0rc4 or higher, which is compatible with recent dask versions:

# In environment.yml or conda-lock.yml
dependencies:
  - odc-stac>=0.4.0rc4

Option 2: Downgrade dask (Temporary)

If it's necessary to keep odc-stac 0.3.11 temporarily:

dependencies:
  - dask<=2025.2.0

Impact

This issue affects any Pangeo image users who need to use odc-stac for:

• Loading STAC data into xarray
• Working with STAC catalogs (Sentinel-2, Landsat, etc.)
• STAC-based geospatial processing

Additional Constraints

In my particular case, I cannot downgrade dask due to dependencies from other packages in the environment, so the only viable solution is to update odc-stac.

Request

Could you please update odc-stac to version 0.4.0rc4 or higher in Pangeo images to resolve this incompatibility?

Alternatively, if there's a specific reason to keep odc-stac at 0.3.11, we would appreciate guidance on alternatives for loading STAC data in these environments.

References

• Dask issue: ImportError: cannot import name 'quote' from 'dask.base' (/opt/conda/lib/python3.11/site-packages/dask/base.py) dask/dask#11843
• odc-stac issue: Import Error When Running odc.stac on Colab opendatacube/odc-stac#164
• odc-stac documentation: https://odc-stac.readthedocs.io/

[weiji14]

Could you open a PR with a pin of odc-stac>=0.4.0 in the pangeo environment.yml file? I just pushed a new 2025.11.13 tag today, but it didn't pick up a new odc-stac version, so let's see what the dependency conflict might be.

[weiji14]

Ok, I tried installing odc-stac=0.4.0 locally, but hit into this error:

error    libmamba Could not solve for environment specs
    The following packages are incompatible
    ├─ odc-stac >=0.4.0 * is installable and it requires
    │  └─ odc-loader >=0.5.1 *, which requires
    │     └─ zarr >=2.18.3,<3 *, which can be installed;
    └─ zarr >=3.0.8 * is not installable because it conflicts with any installable versions previously reported.
critical libmamba Could not solve for environment specs

So we can't upgrade to odc-stac=0.4.0 yet because it would cause us to downgrade to zarr v2. Need to wait until odc-loader=0.6.0 is released with this patch. I see there have been four RC releases, but no official one yet. I'm guessing they are waiting on opendatacube/odc-loader#29.

[weiji14]

FYI, image tag 2025.12.09 should have odc-stac 0.4.1 now, let us know if it worked or didn't!