Setting Up a Local Snuba Development Environment for Sentry Monitoring

Clone Repositories

git clone https://github.com/getsentry/sentry.git
git clone https://github.com/getsentry/snuba.git

Install System Dependencies (macOS example)

Install Xcode command‑line tools and run the Brewfile in the sentry directory.

xcode-select --install
cd sentry
brew bundle --verbose

If Docker Desktop is already running, comment out the line cask 'docker' in the Brewfile.

Build Toolchain

Sentry requires pre‑built Python wheels for Linux (manylinux1) and macOS 10.15+. On other platforms install the Rust toolchain (see https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install) so that binary modules can be compiled.

Python Environment

pyenv is installed by the Brew bundle. Create a virtual environment and activate it.

make setup-pyenv
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
which python   # should point to $HOME/.pyenv/shims/python

Start Sentry Services (excluding Snuba)

source .venv/bin/activate
sentry devservices up --exclude=snuba

Docker pulls and starts containers for Postgres, ClickHouse, Zookeeper, Kafka and Redis. Verify with docker ps.

Configure Snuba

cd snuba
make pyenv-setup
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip==21.1.3
make develop

Run Snuba Migrations

snuba migrations list   # shows pending migration files
snuba migrations migrate --force   # applies all migrations

Verify ClickHouse Tables

docker exec -it sentry_clickhouse clickhouse-client
select count() from sentry_local;

The query returns 0, confirming the tables are reachable.

Inspect Snuba Entities

snuba entities list
# discover, events, groups, …, transactions, sessions, …

Start Development Server

snuba devserver

Open http://localhost:1218/events/snql in a browser to view the simple SnQL UI.