`.dvc` Files

You can use dvc add to track data files or directories located in your current workspace*. Additionally, dvc import and dvc import-url let you bring data from external locations to your project, and start tracking it locally. See Data Versioning for more info.

* Certain external locations are also supported.

Files ending with the .dvc extension ("dot DVC file") are created by these commands as data placeholders that can be versioned with Git. They contain the information needed to track the target data over time. Here's an example:

outs:
  - md5: a304afb96060aad90176268345e10355
    path: data.xml
    desc: Cats and dogs dataset
    remote: myremote

# Comments and user metadata are supported.
meta:
  name: 'Devee Bird'
  email: devee@dvc.org

These files use the YAML 1.2 file format, and a human-friendly schema described below. We encourage you to get familiar with it so you may modify, write, or generate .dvc files on your own.

See also How to Merge Conflicts.

Specification

These are the fields that are accepted at the root level of the .dvc file schema:

Field	Description
`outs`	(Required) list of output entries (details below) that represent the files or directories tracked with DVC. Typically there is only one (but several can be added or combined manually).
`deps`	List of dependency entries (details below). Only present when `dvc import` or `dvc import-url` are used to generate this `.dvc` file. Typically there is only one (but several can be added manually).
`wdir`	Working directory for the `outs` and `deps` paths (relative to the `.dvc` file's location). It defaults to `.` (the file's location).
`md5`	(Only for imports) MD5 hash of the `.dvc` file itself.
`meta`	Arbitrary user metadata can be added manually with this field. Any YAML content is supported. `meta` contents are ignored by DVC.

Comments can be entered using the # comment format.

meta fields and # comments are preserved among executions of dvc repro and dvc commit, but not when the file is overwritten by dvc add, dvc move, dvc import, or dvc import-url.

Output entries

The following subfields may be present under outs entries:

Field	Description
`path`	(Required) Path to the file or directory (relative to `wdir` which defaults to the file's location)
`md5` `etag` `checksum`	Hash value for the file or directory being tracked with DVC. MD5 is used for most locations (local file system and SSH); ETag for HTTP, S3, or Azure external outputs; and a special checksum for HDFS and WebHDFS.
`version_id`	Version ID native to the cloud provider. Used to track each file in the cloud if cloud versioning is enabled.
`size`	Size of the file or directory (sum of all files)
`nfiles`	If this output is a directory, the number of files inside (recursive).
`isexec`	Whether this is an executable file. DVC preserves execute permissions upon `dvc checkout` and `dvc pull`. This has no effect on directories, or in general on Windows.
`cache`	Whether or not this file or directory is cached (`true` by default). See the `--no-commit` option of `dvc add`.
`remote`	Name of the remote to use for pushing/fetching
`persist`	Whether the output file/dir should remain in place while `dvc repro` runs (`false` by default: outputs are deleted when `dvc repro` starts)
`desc`	User description for this output (supported in metrics and plots too). This doesn't affect any DVC operations.
`type`	User-assigned type of the data.
`labels`	User-assigned labels to add to the data.
`meta`	Custom metadata about the data.
`push`	Whether or not this file or directory, when previously cached, is uploaded to remote storage by `dvc push` (`true` by default).

Dependency entries

The following subfields may be present under deps entries:

Field	Description
`path`	(Required) Path to the dependency (relative to `wdir`, which defaults to the file's location)
`md5` `etag` `checksum`	Only in external dependencies created with `dvc import-url`: Hash value of the imported file or directory. MD5 is used for local paths and SSH; ETag for HTTP, S3, GCS, and Azure; and a special checksum for HDFS and WebHDFS.
`size`	Size of the file or directory (sum of all files).
`nfiles`	If this dependency is a directory, the number of files inside (recursive).
`repo`	Only in external dependencies created with `dvc import`: It can contain `url`, `rev`, and `rev_lock` (detailed below).

Dependency `repo` subfields:

Field	Description
`url`	URL of Git repository with source DVC project
`rev`	Only when `dvc import --rev` is used: Specific commit hash, branch or tag name, etc. (a Git revision) used to import the dependency from.
`rev_lock`	Git commit hash of the external DVC repository at the time of importing or updating the dependency (with `dvc update`)

.dvc Files