lightdash compile builds your dbt project’s .yml files into Lightdash explores and reports any errors that would break your Lightdash project. For example, a metric that references a dimension that doesn’t exist.
Compilation also runs inside lightdash validate, lightdash deploy, and lightdash preview, so the behaviour and flags on this page apply to those commands too.
Choose partial or strict compilation
Lightdash uses partial compilation by default. Field, join, and set-validation failures that can be isolated are reported as warnings so the rest of the explore stays usable; failures that cannot be isolated can still produce errors. Add--no-partial-compilation to report the failures that partial compilation would otherwise isolate as errors instead. It doesn’t promote unrelated, non-blocking warnings — other generic compilation warnings stay non-blocking.
If your project uses physical column references such as ${TABLE}.order_id, add --validate-warehouse-columns to check supported unquoted references with warehouse queries that return no rows. It’s opt-in because it sends those queries; whether your warehouse scans or bills for them is warehouse-dependent, and the check needs warehouse credentials and the warehouse catalog. Warehouse-column errors are reported whether partial compilation is on or off.
See the CLI compilation options for the supported reference syntax and every skip condition.
To report the isolated failures as errors instead, use strict compilation:
Compile a subset of your dbt models
If you only use a subset of your dbt models in Lightdash, specify that subset with dbt selection syntax. For example, to only compile models with the taglightdash:
lightdash compile in the CLI reference for every option.
Run compilation in CI
To runlightdash compile on every pull request and catch errors before they’re merged, use the compile workflow template. Follow Compile your dbt project in Automate with CI/CD.