Initializing a dg project

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.

dg provides support for generating a special type of Python package, called a project, that defines a Dagster code location.

To initialize a new project, use the dg init command:

dg init --project-name my-project

Creating a Dagster project at /.../my-project.
Scaffolded files for Dagster project at /.../my-project.
...

Project structure

The dg init command creates a directory with a standard Python package structure with some additions:

tree

.
└── my-project
    ├── pyproject.toml
    ├── src
    │   └── my_project
    │       ├── __init__.py
    │       ├── definitions.py
    │       ├── defs
    │       │   └── __init__.py
    │       └── lib
    │           └── __init__.py
    ├── tests
    │   └── __init__.py
    └── uv.lock

7 directories, 7 files

The Python package my_project lives in src/my_project and contains the deployable code that defines your Dagster pipelines.
my_project/defs will contain your Dagster definitions.
my_project/lib is where you will define custom component types, and optionally other code you wish to share across Dagster definitions.
my_project/definitions.py is the entry point that Dagster will load when deploying your code location. It is configured to load all definitions from my_project/defs. You should not need to modify this file.
tests is a separate Python package defined at the top level (outside src). It should contain tests for the my_project package.
pyproject.toml is a standard Python package configuration file. In addition to the regular Python package metadata, it contains a tool.dg section for dg-specific settings.
uv.lock is the lockfile for the Python package manager uv. dg projects use uv by default. For more information, see uv integration.

Project structure​

Project structure