About dbt running specific models by path

Archive
1

The above states we can run only a subset of models via
dbt run --models path/to/models

Let us take a use case where we have a file path/to/models/a.sql such that there is a ref function in it that references the output of path/to/models_new/b.sql.

b.sql is situated anywhere outside the folder path/to/models

In such a situation will b.sql execute too when dbt run --models path/to/models runs?
Because intuitively it should run as we expect the latest data from the mentioned dependencies (through ref).

2

No, b.sql wouldn’t run because it’s not one of the selected nodes.

Take a look at the Graph operators sub-subsection of that doc. If you want model b to run (as well as all other models that are upstream of the models in the path/to/models folder), then you should call dbt run --models +path/to/models.