Is there a best practice for mocking the task decorators (and other decorators)? Should I do something like:

try:
    import prefect
except ImportError
    def @task(func): return func

?

If you want to keep your existing code base as-is without adding a Prefect dependency, might it be useful to import your existing functions and run them in Prefect flows and tasks? For example:

from prefect import flow, task

from your_module import preprocessing_function
from your_other_module import training_function

@task
def preprocess_data():
  preprocessing_function()

@task
def train():
  training_function()

@flow(name='My pipeline')
def process_and_train():
  preprocess_data()
  train()

This would let you introduce Prefect gradually without needing to alter your existing code - so anyone who wants to keep using the code base as-is can do so, and anyone who wants to use the Prefect flows you are building can install Prefect.

Thanks @Ryan Peden I appreciate that. I had exactly this plan in mind but was wondering whether it’s the way to go