Prefect Docs

# Installing Prefect

# Requirements

Prefect requires Python 3.6+.

# Installation

To install Prefect, run:

pip install prefect

or, if you prefer to use conda:

conda install -c conda-forge prefect

or pipenv:

pipenv install --pre prefect

# Optional dependencies

Prefect ships with a number of optional dependencies, which can be installed using "extras" syntax:

pip install "prefect[extra_1, extra_2]"

The extra packages include:

  • all_extras: includes all of the optional dependencies
  • dev: tools for developing Prefect itself
  • templates: tools for working with string templates
  • viz: tools for visualizing Prefect flows
  • aws: tools for interacting with Amazon Web Services
  • google: tools for interacting with Google Cloud Platform
  • kubernetes: tools for interacting with Kubernetes API objects
  • twitter: tools for interacting with the Twitter API
  • airtable: tools for interacting with the Airtable API
  • spacy: tools for building NLP pipelines using Spacy
  • redis: tools for interacting with a Redis database

# Running the orchestration server

Prefect Core's server is an open-source backend that can orchestrate any flows written in the Prefect Core Python API. It stores flow run metadata in a Postgres database, exposes it over a GraphQL API, and provides an interactive web UI in Vue.js.

Note: Prefect Server requires both Docker and Docker Compose.

To run the server through Docker, run the command:

prefect server start

Navigate in a browser to http://localhost:8080. You will see the Prefect Server UI.

Backend toggle

The backend can be toggled between Prefect Core's server and Prefect Cloud by running the command prefect backend with either server or cloud for the desired option.

# Development

For developing Prefect, see the development guide.

# Docker

Prefect provides Docker images for master builds and versioned releases here.

To run the latest Prefect Docker image:

docker run -it prefecthq/prefect:latest

Image tag breakdown:

Tag Prefect Version Python Version
latest most recent PyPi version 3.7
master master build 3.7
latest-python3.8 most recent PyPi version 3.8
latest-python3.7 most recent PyPi version 3.7
latest-python3.6 most recent PyPi version 3.6
X.Y.Z-python3.8 X.Y.Z 3.8
X.Y.Z-python3.7 X.Y.Z 3.7
X.Y.Z-python3.6 X.Y.Z 3.6

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