Install & Run Dagster

We are going to install Dagster using a virtual environment.

Step 1: Install Anaconda3

I am going to use Anaconda with the Conda package manager to create and manage my virtual environments. You are welcome to use Pip, if you prefer.

1. Go to Anaconda's website and install Anaconda for your operating system.
2. After Anaconda is installed, then make sure that Python3 and Pip3 are on your PATH variable. In a terminal run which python3 and then which pip3. Those commands should return a file path to your Anaconda installation.
3. conda is Anaconda's package manager. Make sure that your conda installation worked: conda --version. If that returns a version number, then you have installed Anaconda3 and conda correctly.

Step 2: Create an environment.yml file in your project root directory

You can create and activate virtual environments with conda. (See Managing environments.)

First, create an environment.yml file in your project root directory. Here is an example of an environment.yml file:

name: dagster
channels:
  - conda
  - conda-forge
dependencies:
  - python=3.9.5
  - pip
  - pip:
    - pandas==1.2.0
    - dagster
    - dagit
    - requests

Step 3: Create your virtual environment

In a terminal window cd into your project directory and run

conda env create -f environment.yml

This will install the virtual environment that is specified in your environment.yml file. In case you see a prompt asking you to confirm before proceeding, type y and press Enter to continue creating the environment. Depending on your system configuration, it may take a while for the process to complete.

Step 4: Verify that the new virtual environment was installed correctly

In your terminal type:

conda env list

You should see the name dagster in that list, which is the name specified in your environment.yml file.

Step 5: Activate your virtual environment

conda activate dagster

Once your virtual environment has been activated, your command prompt should be prefixed with the name of your virtual environment. For example:

(dagster) ~/code/data-engineering/...

How to deactivate a virtual environment

When you are done working on a particular project you can deactivate the virtual environment with:

conda deactivate

See Deactivating an environment

How to delete a virtual environment

First make sure your environment is deactivated. Then run this command:

conda env remove --name name-of-environment

You can verify that your virtual environment has been deleted by running

conda env list