Version pinning and updates in dbt - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Version pinning and updates

📖 Scenario: You are working on a data project using dbt. To keep your project stable, you want to pin the dbt version your project uses. Later, you will learn how to update this version safely.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to pin a specific dbt version in your packages.yml file and update it when needed.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a packages.yml file with a pinned dbt version

Add a variable to hold the new version number

Update the pinned version using the variable

Print the updated packages.yml content

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

In real data projects, pinning dbt versions helps keep your transformations stable and reproducible.

💼 Career

Data engineers and analysts often manage dbt projects and need to control package versions to avoid unexpected errors.

1

Create the initial packages.yml with pinned dbt version

Create a string variable called packages_yml that contains the exact text:
packages: - package: dbt-labs/dbt_utils version: 0.8.0

dbt

# Create a string variable called packages_yml with the exact content
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use triple quotes or escaped newlines to create the multi-line string exactly as shown.

2

Add a variable for the new dbt version

Create a variable called new_version and set it to the string '0.9.1'.

dbt

packages_yml = "packages:\n  - package: dbt-labs/dbt_utils\n    version: 0.8.0"
# Create a variable new_version with value '0.9.1'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the string '0.9.1' to the variable new_version.

3

Update the pinned version in packages_yml using new_version

Replace the version number 0.8.0 in packages_yml with the value of new_version using the replace method. Assign the result back to packages_yml.

dbt

packages_yml = "packages:\n  - package: dbt-labs/dbt_utils\n    version: 0.8.0"
new_version = '0.9.1'
# Replace '0.8.0' with new_version in packages_yml
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the string method replace to swap the old version with the new one.

4

Print the updated packages_yml content

Write a print statement to display the updated packages_yml string.

dbt

packages_yml = "packages:\n  - package: dbt-labs/dbt_utils\n    version: 0.8.0"
new_version = '0.9.1'
packages_yml = packages_yml.replace('0.8.0', new_version)
# Print the updated packages_yml
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(packages_yml) to show the updated content.