pip version 22.x seems to be broken when using pip-compile - throws AssertionError

Question

After upgrading pip to version 22.0.3 (latest), the pip-compile command fails with an AssertionError, even when invoked without any file to compile.

I tried this with python 3.9.5, 3.9.7, 3.9.8 & 3.10.0 and got the same results, which implies to me that this is not specific to a version of python.

I forced the update of pip to older versions of 22.X, but pip-compile didn't work with any of them.

Only after downgrading pip to 21.3.1 does pip-compile work again.

pip install --upgrade pip==21.3.1

I'm using Ubuntu 21.10, but I got a colleague to make the same attempt on his Mac and he got a similar behaviour (The Assertion Error is different, though).

I did a bit of searching and didn't find reports of this issue, so I'm curious if others are experiencing this behaviour.