dbt Core v2: 77 Rust crates, 18 Python files, no Python runtime

dbt rewrote itself in Rust. The speed is the boring part.

I opened a bug report against dbt and found a codebase nobody had told me about: 77 Rust crates where the Python used to be. This is what the rewrite is actually for, why the marketing undersells it, and what I broke loose while poking at it — two fixes, both for bugs that never printed an error.

August 4, 2026 · 16 min · 3408 words · Andrea Bozzo