Writing Your First dbt Package

This text provides a comprehensive guide on how to create dbt packages, including working code examples and an open-source repository that can be built from. It covers different types of packages, the necessary steps for building one, and best practices for development workflow. The two main types of dbt packages are internal packages built for use within organizations and external packages designed for broader users across companies. The guide also explains how to install a package by defining it in the packages.yml file and using the dbt deps command. It emphasizes that packages should be namedpaced, similar to your main dbt project, and variables can be defined globally or tied to a particular package. To learn writing packages, one approach is to study existing open-source dbt packages, while another is to dive right in and create a new package from scratch. The text provides an example of creating a dbt package for a fictional software company called Penta that writes data in a standard format to a data warehouse. The guide also covers testing the package locally using an existing dbt project as a test bed, deploying it in the wild, and making it available to the public by creating a GitHub repository and releasing it on dbt hub. It encourages celebrating the release of your package and seeking feedback from the community.