kubeflow component - why so many ways to define a component and what are the differences?

Question

Please help understand what are the meaningful/significant differences among different ways to create kubeflow pipeline components and the reason for having so many ways?

from kfp.components import func_to_container_op

@func_to_container_op
def add_op(a: float, b: float) -> float:
    """Returns sum of two arguments"""
    return a + b

from kfp.v2.dsl import component

@component
def add_op(a: float, b: float) -> float:
    """Returns sum of two arguments"""
    return a + b

from kfp.components import create_component_from_func

@create_component_from_func
def add_op(a: float, b: float) -> float:
    """Returns sum of two arguments"""
    return a + b

Answer 1

Great question! And I fully agree that KFP in the past has often offered multiple ways to do similar or even same tasks, which causes lots of user confusion.

In KFP SDK 2.0 (currently at beta stage with latest being 2.0.0b5), both func_to_container_op and create_component_from_func are deprecated.

The only option to create a component from a Python function without building a container image is to use @component. For more information, see https://www.kubeflow.org/docs/components/pipelines/v2/author-a-pipeline/components/