Update Dockerfile model caching

Dockerfile

@@ -18,16 +18,12 @@ RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt
 ENV HF_HOME="/home/user/.cache/huggingface"
 ENV SENTENCE_TRANSFORMERS_HOME="/home/user/.cache/huggingface/sentence-transformers"
 
-# ✅ Download and persist SentenceTransformer model during build stage
-RUN python -c "from huggingface_hub import snapshot_download; \
-    snapshot_download(repo_id='sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2', cache_dir='/app/model_cache')"
+# Download and persist SentenceTransformer model during build stage
+RUN python -c "from sentence_transformers import SentenceTransformer; \
+    SentenceTransformer('sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2', cache_folder='/home/user/.cache/huggingface/sentence-transformers')"
 
-# ✅ Ensure the model files are copied to the container
-RUN mkdir -p /home/user/.cache/huggingface/sentence-transformers && \
-    cp -r /app/model_cache/* /home/user/.cache/huggingface/sentence-transformers/
-
-# ✅ Ensure ownership and permissions remain intact
-RUN chown -R user:user /home/user/.cache/huggingface /app/model_cache
+# Ensure ownership and permissions remain intact
+RUN chown -R user:user /home/user/.cache/huggingface
 
 # EXPOSE 7860 (HF automatically maps it)
 EXPOSE 7860

app.py

@@ -66,11 +66,20 @@ os.environ["SENTENCE_TRANSFORMERS_HOME"] = hf_cache_dir
 from huggingface_hub import snapshot_download
 print("⏳ Checking or downloading the all-MiniLM-L6-v2 model from huggingface_hub...")
 # st.write("⏳ Checking or downloading the all-MiniLM-L6-v2 model from huggingface_hub...")
-model_loc = snapshot_download(
-    repo_id="sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2",
-    cache_dir=os.environ["HF_HOME"],
-    local_files_only=True  # 🚨 Avoids re-downloading / fetch from internet (set False for local dev)
-)
+try:
+    model_loc = snapshot_download(
+        repo_id="sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2",
+        cache_dir=hf_cache_dir, # Set directly also fine `os.environ["HF_HOME"]`
+        local_files_only=True   # 🚨 Avoids re-downloading / fetch from internet (set False for local dev)
+    )
+except Exception as e:
+    print(f"❌ Error loading model from cache: {e}")
+    print("⚠️ Retrying with online download enabled...")
+    model_loc = snapshot_download(
+        repo_id="sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2",
+        cache_dir=hf_cache_dir,
+        local_files_only=False   # ⬇️ Fallback
+    )
 print(f"✅ Model directory: {model_loc}")
 # st.write(f"✅ Model directory: {model_loc}")