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Converting an existing project to use dg

warning

This feature is considered in a preview stage and is under active development. It can change significantly, or be removed completely. It is not considered ready for production use.

note

This guide is only relevant if you are starting from an existing Dagster project. This setup is unnecessary if you scaffolded a new project with dg scaffold project.

We have a basic existing Dagster project and have been using pip to manage our Python environment. Our project defines a Python package with a setup.py and a single Dagster asset. The asset is exposed in a top-level Definitions object in my_existing_project/definitions.py.

tree
.
├── my_existing_project
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── assets.py
│   ├── definitions.py
│   └── py.typed
├── README.md
└── setup.py

2 directories, 6 files

Install dependencies​

Install the dg command line tool​

Let's start with a fresh Python virtual environment (you may already have one):

python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate

We'll need to install the dg command line tool. You can install it into the virtual environment using pip:

pip install dagster-dg
note

For simplicity in this tutorial, we are installing the dg executable into the same virtual environment as our project. However, we generally recommend installing dg globally using the uv package manager via uv tool install dagster-dg. This will install dagster-dg into an isolated environment and make it a globally available executable. This makes it easier to work with multiple projects using dg.

Update project structure​

Add pyproject.toml​

The dg command recognizes Dagster projects through the presence of a pyproject.toml file with a tool.dg section. If you are already using pyproject.toml for your project, you can just add the requisite tool.dg to the file. Since our sample project has a setup.py and no pyproject.toml, we need to create a new pyproject.toml file. This can co-exist with setup.py-- it is purely a source of config for dg. Here is the config we need to put in pyproject.toml:

pyproject.toml
[tool.dg]
directory_type = "project"

[tool.dg.project]
root_module = "my_existing_project"
code_location_target_module = "my_existing_project.definitions"

There are three settings:

  • tool.dg.directory_type = "project": This is how dg identifies your package as a Dagster project. This is required.
  • tool.dg.project.root_module = "my_existing_project": This points to the root module of your project. This is also required.
  • tool.dg.project.code_location_target_module = "my_existing_project.definitions": This tells dg where to find the top-level Definitions object in your project. This actually defaults to [root_module].definitions, so it is not strictly necessary for us to set it here, but we are including this setting in order to be explicit--existing projects might have the top-level Definitions object defined in a different module, in which case this setting is required. Now that these settings are in place, you can interact with your project using dg. If we run dg list defs we can see the sole existing asset in our project:
dg list defs
Assets
┏━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Key      ┃ Group   ┃ Deps ┃ Kinds ┃ Description ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ my_asset │ default │      │       │             │
└──────────┴─────────┴──────┴───────┴─────────────┘

Create a defs directory​

Part of the dg experience is autoloading definitions. This means automatically picking up any definitions that exist in a particular module. We are going to create a new submodule named my_existing_project.defs (defs is the conventional name of the module for where definitions live in dg) from which we will autoload definitions.

mkdir my_existing_project/defs

Modify top-level definitions​

Autoloading is provided by a function that returns a Definitions object. Because we already have some other definitions in our project, we'll combine those with the autoloaded ones from my_existing_project.defs.

To do so, you'll need to modify your definitions.py file, or whichever file contains your top-level Definitions object.

You'll autoload definitions using load_defs, then merge them with your existing definitions using Definitions.merge. You pass load_defs the defs module you just created:

import dagster as dg
from my_existing_project.assets import my_asset

defs = dg.Definitions(
    assets=[my_asset],
)

Now let's add an asset to the new defs module. Create my_existing_project/defs/autoloaded_asset.py with the following contents:

import dagster as dg


@dg.asset
def autoloaded_asset(): ...

Finally, let's confirm the new asset is being autoloaded. Run dg list defs again and you should see both the new autoloaded_asset and old my_asset:

dg list defs
Assets
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Key              ┃ Group   ┃ Deps ┃ Kinds ┃ Description ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ autoloaded_asset │ default │      │       │             │
│ my_asset         │ default │      │       │             │
└──────────────────┴─────────┴──────┴───────┴─────────────┘

Now your project is fully compatible with dg!

Next steps​