sqlmesh init -t dlt / dlt_refresh does not recognise dlt ducklake destination

[michaldrobena]

Bug report

When using dlt with a ducklake destination, SQLMesh fails to initialise/refresh from the dlt pipeline metadata.

I see:

Error: Unknown connection type 'ducklake'

---

Environment

• SQLMesh: 0.236.0
• dlt: 1.26.0
• DuckDB: (installed as dependency of the above)
• Python: 3.13.x
• OS: Debian 13 (trixie), x86_64

---

Minimal reproducible example

1) Create clean environment

mkdir sqlmesh-ducklake-mre && cd sqlmesh-ducklake-mre
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install "sqlmesh==0.236.0" "dlt[duckdb,ducklake]==1.26.0"

2) Create simple dlt pipeline with DuckLake destination

Create a run_pipeline.py file and paste in the following:

import dlt

pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
    pipeline_name="mre_ducklake",
    destination=dlt.destinations.ducklake,
    dataset_name="mre",
)

pipeline.run([{"id": 1, "name": "a"}], table_name="items")
print("done")

Run the pipeline

python run_pipeline.py

3) Run SQLMesh dlt integration command

See the docs here

Running this command:

# sqlmesh init -t <template> --pipeline-name <pipeline-name> --dlt-path <pipelines-directory> dialect
sqlmesh init -t dlt --pipeline-name mre_ducklake --dlt-path ~/.local/share/dlt/pipelines duckdb

Generates this error:

Error: Unknown connection type 'ducklake'.

Notes

This appears to be destination-type mapping logic in the dlt integration path, where dlt.destinations.ducklake is present in dlt pipeline state but not recognised by SQLMesh. I do not experience this issue where dlt.destinations.ducklake is present the dlt pipeline.