You can extend any parameter in your environment with the help of --extend wrapper. It works similarly to set and also replaces the deprecated spark_conf_extension. This feature emerged as a replacement for the deprecated spark_conf_extension and it can be very useful for testing, to override the existing configuration and try something else and make the text environment more flexible.

In CLI, there is override from config, which is equivalent to --extend, but --extend is cross-layer so it’s applicable when you need to extend the previous layers.

For example --extend allows you to create more (static) Kubernetes labels per task (defined as list at KuberneticeEngineConfig). You can use --extend to extend a configuration instead of overriding it.

You can extend multiple times. In this case, --extend works like update in a dict.

Using extend

Lets assume we have our KubernetesConfig with those labels in our cfg.

[kubernetes]
...
labels = {"team": "databand_team"}

and we want to extend those labels for my tasks
There are two ways to use extend:

1. Like a parameter:

@task(task_config={KubernetesConfig.labels: extend({"owner": "Joey"} )})
...

2. From the command line:

dbnd run calculate_alpha --extend kubernetes.labels={"owner":"Joey"}

And now the kubernetes labels will include both the "owner" and "team" labels.

Using --extend instead of override

You can use --extend the way you use override - to wrap up the config dictionary with --extend. You can import --extend directly from DBND and wrap up the dictionary. As a result, you can extend the labels (e.g., task_name in the example code below) or any resources (e.g., limits).

@task(
    task_config={KubernetesConfig.labels: extend({"owner": "Joey"} )})

If you need to override something in the dictionary, DBND supports extending dictionaries and lists. Extending a dictionary works like appending/updating the dict so if you extend a dictionary with a key a and you extend it with another dict with the key a, then the last one will override the first one.

Using --extend from the CLI

You can also use --extend from the CLI and extend any configuration. This will work similarly to set and uses the same syntax, but instead of set, you need to use --extend. It’s possible to extend anything (e.g., trackers). If something cannot be extended, DBND will raise an error.

For example:

dbnd run prepare_data --extend spark.conf={"spark.driver.memory": "4G"}

It’s not recommended to extend strings because it can lead to issues.

Keep in mind
If you override something in a lower layer and then have extend in a new layer, for extend to work correctly, you’ll need to override both the highest priority layer and extend, which is a difficult way to work.