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Failing fast

Supply the -x or --fail-fast flag to dbt run, dbt build, or dbt test to make dbt exit immediately on the first failure. fail_fast is a global flag, so it stops on both run errors and test errors —— not just run errors. If other models are in-progress when the first failure happens, then dbt will terminate the connections for these still-running models.

For the full precedence rules and environment-variable equivalent (DBT_FAIL_FAST), refer to fail_fast row in About global configs.

For example, you can select four models to run, but if a failure occurs in the first model, the failure will prevent other models from running:

$ dbt run -x --threads 1
Running with dbt=1.0.0
Found 4 models, 1 test, 1 snapshot, 2 analyses, 143 macros, 0 operations, 1 seed file, 0 sources

14:47:39 | Concurrency: 1 threads (target='dev')
14:47:39 |
14:47:39 | 1 of 4 START table model test_schema.model_1........... [RUN]
14:47:40 | 1 of 4 ERROR creating table model test_schema.model_1.. [ERROR in 0.06s]
14:47:40 | 2 of 4 START view model test_schema.model_2............ [RUN]
14:47:40 | CANCEL query model.debug.model_2....................... [CANCEL]
14:47:40 | 2 of 4 ERROR creating view model test_schema.model_2... [ERROR in 0.05s]

Database Error in model model_1 (models/model_1.sql)
  division by zero
  compiled SQL at target/run/debug/models/model_1.sql

Encountered an error:
FailFast Error in model model_1 (models/model_1.sql)
  Failing early due to test failure or runtime error
Report incorrect code

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