SQLMesh is licensed under Apache 2.0. We encourage community contribution and would love for you to get involved. The following document outlines the process to contribute to SQLMesh.
Before you begin, ensure you have the following installed on your machine. Exactly how to install these is dependent on your operating system.
- Docker
- Docker Compose V2
- OpenJDK >= 11
- Python >= 3.9 < 3.13
The development environment of SQLMesh depends both on:
- Python functionality (e.g.
SIGUSR1) that is only available on UNIX systems, and; - Symbolic links in the repository which, whilst available on Windows, typically require additional permissions for the process running git.
For the Python functionality, a dev container is provided to develop against Ubuntu 24 with Python 3.12.
For symbolic links, you must ensure that when checking out the repository:
- The git configuration
core.symlinksis set totrue - The process that git runs as is permitted to create symbolic links. This can typically be done by running git as an administrator, or enabling developer mode on Windows.
We do recommend using a virtual environment to develop SQLMesh.
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activateOnce you have activated your virtual environment, you can install the dependencies by running the following command.
make install-devOptionally, you can use pre-commit to automatically run linters/formatters:
make install-pre-commitRun linters and formatters:
make styleRun faster tests for quicker local feedback:
make fast-testRun more comprehensive tests that run on each commit:
make slow-testIn order to run the documentation server, you will need to install the dependencies by running the following command.
make install-docOnce you have installed the dependencies, you can run the documentation server by running the following command.
make docs-serveRun docs tests:
make doc-testIn addition to the Python development, you can also develop the UI.
The UI is built using React and Typescript. To run the UI, you will need to install the dependencies by running the following command.
pnpm installRun ide:
make ui-upSimilar to UI development, you can also develop the VSCode extension. To do so, make sure you have the dependencies installed by running the following command inside the vscode/extension directory.
pnpm installOnce that is done, developing the VSCode extension is most easily done by launching the Run Extensions debug task from a Visual Studio Code workspace opened at the root of the SQLMesh repository. By default, the VSCode extension will run the SQLMesh server locally and open a new Visual Studio Code window that allows you to try out the SQLMesh IDE. It opens the examples/sushi project by default. To set up Visual Studio Code to run the Run Extensions debug task, you can run the following command which will copy the launch.json and tasks.json files to the .vscode directory.
make vscode_settings