Environment:Dagster io Dagster Python 3 10 Runtime

Knowledge Sources	dagster setup.py Contributing Guide
Domains	Infrastructure, Python_Runtime
Last Updated	2026-02-10 12:00 GMT

Overview

Python 3.10+ runtime environment with core dependencies required to run the Dagster orchestration framework.

Description

This environment defines the base Python runtime and core dependency stack required to run any Dagster project. Dagster requires Python 3.10 through 3.14 and ships with specific version-dependent constraints for gRPC and protobuf libraries. The framework uses SQLAlchemy for storage, gRPC for inter-process communication, and Alembic for database migrations.

Usage

Use this environment as the base prerequisite for all Dagster workflows. Every Implementation in the Dagster knowledge graph requires this runtime. It is the foundation upon which all integration libraries (dagster-dbt, dagster-openai, dagster-aws, etc.) are built.

System Requirements

Category	Requirement	Notes
OS	Linux, macOS, or Windows	OS-independent; Windows may have limited compute log support
Python	>= 3.10, < 3.15	3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13, 3.14 supported
Disk	500MB+ free space	For SQLite storage, logs, and local artifact storage

Dependencies

Python Packages (Core)

click >= 5.0, < 9.0
coloredlogs >= 6.1, <= 14.0
Jinja2
alembic >= 1.2.1 (excluding 1.6.3, 1.7.0, 1.11.0)
grpcio >= 1.44.0 (Python < 3.13) or >= 1.66.2 (Python >= 3.13)
grpcio-health-checking >= 1.44.0 (or >= 1.66.2 for Python 3.13+)
protobuf >= 3.20.0, < 7 (Python < 3.11) or >= 4, < 7 (Python >= 3.11)
python-dotenv
pytz
requests
setuptools < 82
sqlalchemy >= 1.0, < 3
toposort >= 1.0
watchdog >= 0.8.3, < 7
rich
filelock
structlog
dagster-pipes
dagster-shared

Optional Dependencies

dagster-webserver - Required for dagster dev command
rapidfuzz - Faster fuzzy matching (falls back to stdlib difflib)
dagster-postgres - PostgreSQL storage backend
dagster-mysql - MySQL storage backend

Credentials

No credentials are required for the base Python runtime. See the DAGSTER_HOME_Configuration environment for instance-level configuration.

Quick Install

# Install Dagster core
pip install dagster dagster-webserver

# Or with uv (recommended in Dagster development)
uv pip install dagster dagster-webserver

Code Evidence

Python version constraint from setup.py:81:

python_requires=">=3.10,<3.15",

Version-dependent gRPC floor from setup.py:28-33:

# grpcio 1.66.2 is the min version compatible with python 3.13
if sys.version_info >= (3, 13):
    GRPC_VERSION_FLOOR = "1.66.2"
# grpcio 1.44.0 is the min version compatible with both protobuf 3 and 4
else:
    GRPC_VERSION_FLOOR = "1.44.0"

Version-dependent protobuf from setup.py:92-93:

"protobuf>=3.20.0,<7; python_version<'3.11'",
"protobuf>=4,<7; python_version>='3.11'",

Common Errors

Error Message	Cause	Solution
`python_requires >= 3.10`	Python version too old	Upgrade to Python 3.10+
`grpcio version conflict`	Wrong grpcio for Python 3.13	Use grpcio >= 1.66.2 on Python 3.13+
`No module named 'dagster_webserver'`	dagster-webserver not installed	`pip install dagster-webserver`
`alembic version conflict`	Broken alembic version pinned	Avoid alembic 1.6.3, 1.7.0, 1.11.0

Compatibility Notes

Python 3.13+: Requires grpcio >= 1.66.2 due to C extension compilation changes.
Python < 3.11: Can use protobuf 3.x or 4.x; Python >= 3.11 requires protobuf >= 4.
Windows: Compute logs may be disabled on older Python versions. Requires pywin32 (excluding broken version 226).
setuptools < 82: Required because some transitive dependencies still import pkg_resources which was removed in setuptools 82.

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