Why does this project.yml produce 'There are 1 unused configuration paths'....?

Modeling
#1

I’ve been using dbt for a year, and started a new project with seed data. There is a single csv file in the ./data folder. the dbt_project file contains:

name: oddz_data_marts
version: '1.0'
profile: 'marts'

source-paths: ["models"]
analysis-paths: ["analysis"] 
test-paths: ["tests"]
data-paths: ["data"]
macro-paths: ["macros"]

target-path: "target"  # directory which will store compiled SQL files
clean-targets:         # directories to be removed by `dbt clean`
  - "target"
  - "dbt_modules"

seeds:
  oddz_data_marts:
    enabled: true
    schema: seed_data
    quote_columns: false

models:
  oddz_data_marts:

The results of “dbt seed”, are…

WARNING: Configuration paths exist in your dbt_project.yml file which do not apply to any resources.
There are 1 unused configuration paths:

  • seeds.oddz_data_marts

Help ?

#2

Hey @MisterFine – can you take a moment to edit the question with code formatting? Given you’re sharing yaml, it’s important for me to be able to check the spacing of your code. Discourse uses markdown for text formatting.

Also, which version of dbt are you using? You can check with dbt --version.

#3

V0.14.0 and 0.15.0 – see console output below…

A0231:oddz_data_marts rfine$ dbt seed
Running with dbt=0.15.0
WARNING: Configuration paths exist in your dbt_project.yml file which do not apply to any resources.
There are 1 unused configuration paths:
- seeds.oddz_data_marts
#4

I’m absolutely stumped here! I copied your dbt_project.yml file into my own test project and I didn’t get the same warning (tested on both 0.14.4 and 0.15.0).

I’m going to check Occam’s razor here – is there any chance you’ve misspelt oddz_data_marts as the value next to name:? Or is it possible you’ve edited the file but haven’t hit save before running? I’m really not sure what else it could be :confused:

#5

Solved. After a series of tests, it occurred to me – this is just a warning. Apparently, if you define a seeds configuration block with any included keys, dbt checks to see if there are any CSV files n the seeds. If there are none, it warns that the seeds configuration paths have no resources. As long as there is at least one file to seed, no warning.

#6

Oh that makes sense! When I tested it, I had seed files in my project. In which case the warnings works exactly as expected :slight_smile:

#7

I ran into an other reason why I was getting the same error. It came with the changes to dbt_project.yml in 0.17.0. I had to add some column_types configuration to a seed file and I kept getting the error that there were unused configuration paths. Turns our that without the + it was reading column_types as part of the file path and not a configuration.

https://docs.getdbt.com/docs/guides/migration-guide/upgrading-to-0-17-0#unambiguous-resource-configurations

working result

seeds:        
  my_project:  
    folder:
      seed_file:        
        +column_types:
            ...