Semantic Model to Git Results in Untracked File on macOS

[henrituol]

I came across a very strange edge case, and I'm wondering if anyone else has encountered this issue. I have a workspace that includes semantic models with names containing characters like ä and ö. I have successfully added the semantic models to source control (GitHub) from the workspace. However, when I execute a git pull on the repository to my MacBook and perform git status immediately afterward, Git shows that there are untracked files! Most of the semantic models are fine, but one becomes untracked. It's worth noting that other semantic models also contain ä and ö characters, so there must be something different about this one semantic model.

I then asked my colleague, who has a Windows machine, to test this, and their Git didn't show any untracked files after the pull. Therefore, it has to be something macOS-Git related. Indeed, I found that the git config core.precomposeunicode setting is the key. When it is set to false, my macOS Git recognizes the semantic model as tracked. However, this indicates that this one semantic model uses a decomposed form of certain characters, which is not optimal.

Once a file name has been added in decomposed form to a Git repository, the only way of solving the problem is to remove these files from Git and re-add them with core.precomposeunicode set to true on Mac OS X or perform this action on Linux or Windows.

https://www.git-tower.com/help/guides/faq-and-tips/faq/unicode-filenames/mac

Interestingly enough, the files were added to Git via the PBI Service Workspace. How is it possible that one of the semantic models is in decomposed form?

[v-rzhou-msft]

Hi @henrituol ,

I think your issue should be caused that when you integrate Power BI with Git, PBI sends requests to Git where the file name has special characters, where the special characters are transcoded and cause errors.

I suggest you refer to the cross-reference table in the blog and then replace the special character fields in it when you get the file.

For reference: HTML URL Encoding Reference

Best Regards,
Rico Zhou

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[henrituol]

It's interesting that users other than the original poster can mark questions as solved. This is by no means the proper solution for the issue at hand.

I am aware that special characters are at the center of this issue. However, firstly, there are other semantic models with exactly the same characters that work fine. Secondly, I cannot change semantic model names to include substrings like %C3%B6—it just isn't readable. I know that both PBI Service and Git handle "ö" just fine.

I am fine with leaving this question without a solution. I think this is valuable in itself—at least I would have been glad to find mentions of this macOS-specific issue with decomposed form Unicode filenames.