Why does `joblib.delayed` not work as decorator?

It looks like it's a namespace issue, which causes joblib.delayed to attempt to pickle the output function (instead of the original function).

I haven't looked into the joblib code, but the thing you proposed would be the way to do it:

import joblib

def _func(*args, **kwargs):
    'your code here'

func = joblib.delayed(_func)

It's not ideal, but it works.