Installation

This page provides instructions for installing SQLMesh on your computer.

Python virtual environment

It is recommended, but not required, that you use a python virtual environment with SQLMesh.

First, create the virtual environment:

python -m venv .env

Then activate it:

source .env/bin/activate

Install SQLMesh core

Install the core SQLMesh library with pip:

pip install sqlmesh

Install extras

Some SQLMesh functionality requires additional Python libraries.

pip will automatically install them for you if you specify the relevant name in brackets. For example, you install the SQLMesh browser UI extras with pip install "sqlmesh[web]".

Some extras add features, like the SQLMesh browser UI or Github CI/CD bot:

Feature extras commands

Feature	pip command
Browser UI	pip install "sqlmesh[web]"
dbt projects	pip install "sqlmesh[dbt]"
Github CI/CD bot	pip install "sqlmesh[github]"
Slack notifications	pip install "sqlmesh[slack]"
Development setup	pip install "sqlmesh[dev]"
LLM SQL prompt	pip install "sqlmesh[llm]"

Other extras are required to use specific SQL engines, like Bigquery or Postgres:

SQL engine extras commands

SQL engine	pip command
Bigquery	pip install "sqlmesh[bigquery]"
Databricks	pip install "sqlmesh[databricks]"
GCP Postgres	pip install "sqlmesh[gcppostgres]"
MS SQL Server	pip install "sqlmesh[mssql]"
MySQL	pip install "sqlmesh[mysql]"
Postgres	pip install "sqlmesh[postgres]"
Redshift	pip install "sqlmesh[redshift]"
Snowflake	pip install "sqlmesh[snowflake]"

Multiple extras can be installed at once, as in pip install "sqlmesh[web,slack]".

Pydantic v2

SQLMesh supports Pydantic v2, but since v2 is relatively new, v1 is the version installed by default. If you would like to use Pydantic v2, you can by installing it after installing SQLMesh.

pip install --upgrade pydantic

Pip may issue a warning about dependency conflicts, but SQLMesh should still function fine. Furthermore, if you are using the SQLMesh UI, you will also need to install pydantic-settings.

pip install --upgrade pydantic-settings

Next steps

Now that you've installed SQLMesh, it's time to get started with the SQLMesh example project.

SQLMesh has three user interfaces - choose one for the example project and jump right in:

• Command line interface (CLI)
• Notebook interface
• Browser UI graphical interface

Have an existing dbt project you want to run? Install the dbt extra and check out SQLMesh's dbt adapter.