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pbit-git

Unzip .pbit files before committing them to git

Overview

.pbit (and other MS Office files) are stored as ZIP-compressed XML files. Git, by default, treats them as binary files, so whenever you make a change to an Power BI template file and then commit it to your repo, almost the entire content of the file changes. Git tools like git-diff or git-revert thus can't do much good.

pbit-git provides hooks to convert .pbit files into their text and smaller binary files before committing them. This means you get the benefit of plain text source files, but you don't have to convert your .pbit files back and forth yourself.

Issues

  • NOT TESTED AND MAY WIPE OUT ALL YOUR FILES.
  • risk of conflicts with other files
  • script might break if dependencies are not met
  • some other risks mapped on TODO on source files

Checkout restrictions

When you have .pbit files in your repo, you won't be able to checkout other branches or commits because the post-checkout hook always leaves the .pbit files in a "modified" state. This protects you against accidentally losing saved but not committed work in Power BI templates. Before checkout, use git stash to get to a clean state by hiding away your Power BI template files.

Installation and Use

  1. Run install-git-hooks.sh to link git hooks and check if all commands are installed:

    ./install-git-hooks.sh

  2. Make sure the scripts are executable (e.g., chmod 755 git/hooks/*-commit)

Dependencies

I use Cygwin and the GNU tools that go with that. With Git Extensions or MinGW you may need some other basic commands, like dirname and basename. In addition:

  • zip and unzip
  • libxml2-utils for xmllint
  • jq for json formatting