Synapse Git Tools

Note that this extension is beta, use at your own risk

The extension containes helper functionality for handling Azure Synapse Workspace related Git functionality. At this point the functionality includes a helper for performing the merger of SQL script files.

Contact information

This extension has been developed as a hobby project by Christian Lindholm. In case of questions, development ideas or bug reports, please contact me by email christian.lindholm@fellowmind.fi.

Features

Merging of SQL script files

SQL script files created in the Synapse Workspace are storded into the Git repository in a format that is unpractical for merging and diff tracking in Git:

• Users tend to write SQL scripts spanning over multiple lines to add for readability
• Multiline text is easy to handle in Git merges, due to git tracking changes on a line by line basis
• The problem: Synapse stores an SQL script in a single json file where the SQL query is stored as a single line of text with linebreaks escaped as \n.
• This single line of text is not easy to merge in Git, as the entire SQL script is treated as a single line of text.

This tool addresses the merge problem by providing a way of extracting the single line queries and expanding it to a multiline format that is easier to merge.

The merging tool is designed for handling the following scenarios:

• Merging of conflicts in a Git merge scenario.
• Merging of conflicts in a Git rebase scenario.
• Comparison of changes in the working tree to the latest commit.

Requirements

The extension requires that kdiff3 is installed on the computer. Currenlty both Windows and Mac are supported. Download the newest version from here kdiff3 stable releases You must install the extension for all users and with the default paths.

Extension Settings

This extension does not add any settings to VS Code.

Known Issues

The extension is in a beta mode and is not yet fully tested. Use at your own risk.

Development ideas

• Change to use the VS Code integrated merge tool instead of kdiff3
• Create easy to understand instructions for using the extension
• Add support for comparing a file between two arbitrary commits
• Put the temporary files in a user accessible temp folder outside of the workspace
• Add cleanup routines for the temporary files