.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.
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: myremoteThese 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. |
Comments can be entered using the # comment format.
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) |
hash | Hash algorithm for the file or directory being tracked with DVC (only md5 is currently supported). |
md5etagchecksum | 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) |
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) |
hash | Hash algorithm for the file or directory being tracked with DVC (only md5 is currently supported). |
md5etagchecksum | 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, rev_lock, config and remote (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) |
config | When dvc import --config is used: Path to a config file that will be merged with the config in the target repository. When both --remote and --remote-config are used: config options that will be merged with the config in the target repository. See examples section indvc import. |
remote | Only when dvc import --remote or --remote-config is used: name of the dvc remote to set as a default or remote config options to merge with a default remote's config in the target repository. See examples section in dvc import. |