[Epic] Multi-project collaboration: one year in

[jtcohen6]

Bugs and quality-of-life improvements, collected and prioritized based on feedback from dbt Cloud customers and community members, now that "dbt Mesh" has been out in the world for 6+ months — and thousands are using its constructs in production.

P0 - must

Beta Give feedback

1. [Bug] Renaming or removing a contracted model should raise a BreakingChange warning/error #10116
   High Severity bug model_contracts multi_project +4
   
2. [CT-3315] [Bug] Selecting nodes downstream of upstream public models for run/build/test/etc #8987
   Medium Severity bug multi_project +3
3. [Bug] Projects with restrict-access: true cannot leverage generic tests on private models #10134
   Medium Severity bug model_groups_access multi_project +4
4. [CT-2468] [Feature] For versioned models, automatically create view/clone of latest version in unsuffixed database location #7442
   enhancement model_versions multi_project +3

P1 - should

Beta Give feedback

1. [CT-3528] [Feature] Define a "yeslist" of downstream projects that can reference specific protected model(s) #9340
   Refinement enhancement model_groups_access multi_project +4
2. [CT-3527] [implementation] extend access and groups to exposures & source #9339
   enhancement model_groups_access multi_project user docs +4
3. [CT-2897] [Feature] Suppress stack trace when a model contract is violated #8266
   enhancement model_contracts multi_project +3
4. [CT-2809] Support ref in foreign key constraint expressions #8062
   enhancement model_contracts multi_project +3

P2 - could

Beta Give feedback

1. [CT-3296] [Feature] Option to enforce 2-argument ref() when referencing models from other packages/projects #8951
   enhancement multi_project +2
2. [CT-3314] [Feature] Support project as an alias for package selection method #8986
   enhancement multi_project +2
3. [CT-2889] Macros executed via run-operation cannot ref private models #8248
   enhancement help_wanted model_groups_access multi_project +4
4. [CT-775] [Enhancement] dbt deps does not correctly resolve local dependency of local dependency #5410
   deps enhancement multi_project +3

revisit, refine, prioritize

Beta Give feedback

1. [CT-2460] [Feature] Infer schema from prod, to enforce contract & detect breaking changes in dev #7432
   Refinement enhancement model_contracts multi_project spike state +6
   
2. [CT-2625] Support model contracts + constraints with nested fields in core #7759
   model_contracts multi_project tech_debt +3

[jaklan]

#5410 should be definitely a must - as described in the issue, it's completely breaking the monorepo usage of dbt