Remove all dbt dependencies from metricflow test environments

We no longer use dbt at all inside of Metricflow prpoer, so
this removes all dependencies.

The main changes of interest involve the updates to the pre-commit
configuration. The original config was not package-specific since
all critical dependencies were available from the metricflow
environment, so we could run linters without any custom installations.

Now that metricflow has no dbt dependency in its dev environment,
mypy will no longer typecheck correctly via pre-commit in the
dbt-metricflow package. Since mypy is the only affected item we work
around this by invoking it from the makefile for dbt-metricflow,
and otherwise excluding dbt-metricflow from the pre-commit execution.

Author: tlento

.changes/unreleased/Dependencies-20260202-150038.yaml

@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+kind: Dependencies
+body: Remove dbt dependencies from Metricflow development packages. This will require an environment refresh across metricflow and dbt-metricflow.
+time: 2026-02-02T15:00:38.874789-05:00
+custom:
+    Author: tlento
+    Issue: "1967"

.pre-commit-config.yaml

@@ -33,6 +33,9 @@ repos:
     rev: v1.3.0
     hooks:
       - id: mypy
+        # dbt-metricflow requires dbt-core, which is not installed in the main metricflow dev environment.
+        # We typecheck dbt-metricflow separately via direct invocation inside the `make lint` command
+        exclude: "^dbt-metricflow/"
         args: [--show-error-codes]
         verbose: true
         # "system" means that the current environment will be used to run the hook, not the environment installed by

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ When running any one of the hatch commands, the environment is automatically set
     - Run the following commands in your shell, replacing the tags with the appropriate values:
         - `export MF_SQL_ENGINE_URL=<YOUR_WAREHOUSE_CONNECTION_URL>`
         - `export MF_SQL_ENGINE_PASSWORD=<YOUR_WAREHOUSE_PASSWORD>`
-    - Run `make test-<engine>` to execute the entire test suite against the target engine. This will also set the `MF_TEST_ADAPTER_TYPE` to the proper engine identifier and pull in and configure the necessary dbt adapter dependencies for query execution. For example, to run tests against BigQuery, run `make test-bigquery`
+    - Run `make test-<engine>` to execute the entire test suite against the target engine. This will pull in and configure the necessary dependencies for query execution. For example, to run tests against BigQuery, run `make test-bigquery`
     - By default, without `MF_SQL_ENGINE_URL` and `MF_SQL_ENGINE_PASSWORD` set, your tests will run against DuckDB.
 4. Run the linters with `make lint` at any time, but especially before submitting a PR. We use:
     - `Black` for formatting

Makefile

@@ -90,6 +90,8 @@ test-trino:
 .PHONY: lint
 lint:
 	hatch -v run dev-env:pre-commit run --verbose --all-files $(ADDITIONAL_PRECOMMIT_OPTIONS)
+	@echo "\n\nTypechecking dbt-metricflow separately due to dbt-core dependency...\n\n"
+	cd dbt-metricflow && hatch -v run dev-env:mypy --config-file ../mypy.ini dbt_metricflow
 
 # Running data warehouses locally
 .PHONY: postgresql postgres

pyproject.toml

@@ -106,18 +106,14 @@ features = ["dev-env-requirements"]
 
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.dev-env.env-vars]
-MF_TEST_ADAPTER_TYPE="duckdb"
 MF_SQL_ENGINE_URL="duckdb://"
-# This allows us to use the classes in the `dbt-metricflow` package for tests without installing the package.
-# `dbt-metricflow` can't be installed as it has `metricflow` as a dependency.
-PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics:dbt-metricflow"
+PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics"
 
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.postgres-env.env-vars]
-PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics:dbt-metricflow"
+PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics"
 MF_SQL_ENGINE_URL="postgresql://metricflow@localhost:5432/metricflow"
 MF_SQL_ENGINE_PASSWORD="metricflowing"
-MF_TEST_ADAPTER_TYPE="postgres"
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.postgres-env]
 description = "Dev environment for working with PostgreSQL"
@@ -129,17 +125,15 @@ features = ["postgres-env-requirements"]
 ## configured independently of the hatch env construction
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.bigquery-env.env-vars]
-PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics:dbt-metricflow"
-MF_TEST_ADAPTER_TYPE="bigquery"
+PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics"
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.bigquery-env]
 description = "Dev environment for working with BigQuery"
 template = "dev-env"
 features = ["bigquery-env-requirements"]
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.databricks-env.env-vars]
-PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics:dbt-metricflow"
-MF_TEST_ADAPTER_TYPE="databricks"
+PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics"
 
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.databricks-env]
@@ -149,19 +143,16 @@ features = ["databricks-env-requirements"]
 
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.redshift-env.env-vars]
-PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics:dbt-metricflow"
-MF_TEST_ADAPTER_TYPE="redshift"
+PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics"
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.redshift-env]
 description = "Dev environment for working with Redshift"
 template = "dev-env"
 features = ["redshift-env-requirements"]
-extra-dependencies = ["dbt-redshift>=1.8.0, <1.9.0"]
 
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.snowflake-env.env-vars]
-PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics:dbt-metricflow"
-MF_TEST_ADAPTER_TYPE="snowflake"
+PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics"
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.snowflake-env]
 description = "Dev environment for working with Snowflake"
@@ -170,8 +161,7 @@ features = ["snowflake-env-requirements"]
 
 
 [tool.hatch.envs.trino-env.env-vars]
-PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics:dbt-metricflow"
-MF_TEST_ADAPTER_TYPE = "trino"
+PYTHONPATH="metricflow-semantics"
 MF_SQL_ENGINE_URL = "trino://trino@localhost:8080/memory"
 MF_SQL_ENGINE_PASSWORD=""
 

requirements-files/dev-env-requirements.txt

@@ -1,10 +1,8 @@
-# SqlAlchemy for new client implementation
+# Test SqlClients depend on SqlAlchemy 2.x
 sqlalchemy>=2.0.0, <2.1.0
+# DuckDB engine for DuckDB-backed, SqlAlchemy-based client
 duckdb-engine>=0.13.0, <0.14.0
-
-# dbt dependencies (kept for parallel operation during transition)
-dbt-core>=1.10.4, <1.11.0
-# Excluding 1.2.1 due to window functions returning incorrect results:
+# Excluding duckdb 1.2.1 due to window functions returning incorrect results:
 # https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/issues/16617
 # Version 1.4.0 seems to have issues as well, so pinning to <1.4.0 until those are resolved.
 duckdb !=1.2.1, <1.4.0

requirements-files/requirements-databricks.txt

@@ -1,3 +1,2 @@
-# SqlAlchemy Databricks connector
-databricks-sql-connector>=3.0.0, <4.0.0
+# SqlAlchemy Databricks connector, includes databricks-sql-connector
 databricks-sqlalchemy>=2.0.0, <3.0.0

requirements-files/requirements-postgres.txt

@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
-# SqlAlchemy PostgreSQL connector
+# SqlALchemy includes a dialect for PostgreSQL compatible with psycopg2
 psycopg2-binary>=2.9.0, <3.0.0