Hi! A question on transformation plugins. Can I add other transformation plugins to Meltano than dbt, or is the coupling with dbt currently too tight for it to be possible? I have been working on a side-project that works a lot like dbt, except it handles the transformations inside the tool itself (through Polars), so I was thinking that it would be cool to try to integrate it as a transformation plugin in Meltano, but not really sure where to start or if it would require a rewrite of how transformer plugins are handled within Meltano.

Hey @john_kaustinen - meltano is moving away from referring to plugins like dbt as transformers and instead calling them utilities, no real functional change though. We migrated all of the dbt variants on the hub to match. The new recommended approach is to wrap tools like this using the meltano EDK (extension developer kit) https://edk.meltano.com/en/latest/ . So you can create an extension for Polars using the EDK and use it in your project! The EDK lets you add extra meltano sugar to it like scaffolding project directories on init, running pre/post hooks, etc.

Great, thanks for the fast response. Will certainly have a look at the EDK then 👍. And just to clarify, I did not write Polars, my side-project is just using it as a dependency. 🙂 But I got the idea, thanks!