Development Mode

Development mode accelerates extension development by letting developers see changes in Superset quickly, without the need for repeated packaging and uploading. To enable development mode, set the LOCAL_EXTENSIONS configuration in your superset_config.py:

LOCAL_EXTENSIONS = [
    "/path/to/your/extension1",
    "/path/to/your/extension2",
]

This instructs Superset to load and serve extensions directly from disk, so you can iterate quickly. Running superset-extensions dev watches for file changes and rebuilds assets automatically, while the Webpack development server (started separately with npm run dev-server) serves updated files as soon as they're modified. This enables immediate feedback for React components, styles, and other frontend code. Changes to backend files are also detected automatically and immediately synced, ensuring that both frontend and backend updates are reflected in your development environment.

Example output when running in development mode:

superset-extensions dev

⚙️  Building frontend assets…
✅ Frontend rebuilt
✅ Backend files synced
✅ Manifest updated
👀 Watching for changes in: /dataset_references/frontend, /dataset_references/backend