⚠️ Breaking Change
Impact Score: 7/10
dbt Core: dbt 0.17.1
Source available — automated, not human-reviewed
Component: dbt-core · Channel: stable. Automated analysis, not a compatibility certification. How this works.
Analysis updated: 2026-11-01.
Breaking-change evidence from the source
This is a bugfix release with one breaking change and one enhancement of an existing feature.
Breaking changes - dbt native rendering is no longer enabled by default, as it was in v0.17.0. It requires the use of opt-in filters: `as_native`, `as_bool`, and `as_number`. ([#2612](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/issues/2612), [#2618](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2618))
⚡ Executive Summary (TL;DR)
dbt Core v0.17.1. Source highlight: dbt 0.17.1 (July 20, 2020)
Who Does This Impact? (Role-Based Analysis)
💻 Software Engineers & Devs
Check the source notes against the package and APIs you use before upgrading.
📊 Product & Engineering Leads
Use the documented changes to assess relevance to your product; release frequency alone is not a quality measure.
⚙️ DevOps & Security
Verify the target version, runtime requirements and rollback procedure in the official documentation.
⚠️ Breaking Changes & Deprecations (2)
- This is a bugfix release with one breaking change and one enhancement of an existing feature.
- Breaking changes - dbt native rendering is no longer enabled by default, as it was in v0.17.0. It requires the use of opt-in filters: `as_native`, `as_bool`, and `as_number`. ([#2612](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/issues/2612), [#2618](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2618))
✨ New Features & Capabilities (1)
- On BigQuery, `persist_docs` persists descriptions for nested columns (#2549, #2550)
🔧 Bug Fixes & Patches (6)
- Hash names of local packages (#2600)
- Handle too-long file paths on Windows (#2591, #2558, #2566, #2603)
- Fix a bug where `persist_docs` ignored seeds on BigQuery (#2598, #2601)
- Fix a bug where dbt `config-version: 2` rendered `+pre-hook` and `+post-hook` fields too eagerly (#2583, #2854)
- Fix a bug where `dbt compile` and `dbt ls` would create schemas if they didn't already exist (#2525, #2528)
- Fix a bug where `dbt deps` ignored the `--project-dir` flag (#2519, #2534)
📄 View Raw Release Notes (Original Developer Log)
## dbt 0.17.1 (July 20, 2020)
This is a bugfix release with one breaking change and one enhancement of an existing feature.
### Breaking changes
- dbt native rendering is no longer enabled by default, as it was in v0.17.0. It requires the use of opt-in filters: `as_native`, `as_bool`, and `as_number`. ([#2612](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/issues/2612), [#2618](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2618))
### Features
- On BigQuery, `persist_docs` persists descriptions for nested columns ([#2549](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/issues/2549), [#2550](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2550))
### Fixes
- Hash names of local packages ([#2600](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2600))
- Handle too-long file paths on Windows ([#2591](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2591), [#2558](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/issues/2558), [#2566](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2566), [#2603](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2603))
- Fix a bug where `persist_docs` ignored seeds on BigQuery ([#2598](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/issues/2598), [#2601](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2601))
- Fix a bug where dbt `config-version: 2` rendered `+pre-hook` and `+post-hook` fields too eagerly ([#2583](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/issues/2583), [#2854](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2854))
- Fix a bug where `dbt compile` and `dbt ls` would create schemas if they didn't already exist ([#2525](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/issues/2525), [#2528](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2528))
- Fix a bug where `dbt deps` ignored the `--project-dir` flag ([#2519](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/issues/2519), [#2534](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2534))
- Fix a bug where parallel RPC requests confounded each others' arguments ([[#2484](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/issues/2484), [#2554](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2554)])
- Fix a bug where dbt ignored config aliases in config() calls and dbt_project.yml ([#2557](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/issues/2557), [#2559](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2559), [#2575](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2575))
- Fix unclickable nodes in the dbt Docs DAG viz ([#101](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt-docs/pull/101))
- Fix relation names with null databases (i.e. Spark) in dbt Docs site ([#96](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt-docs/pull/96))
Contributors:
- [@bodschut](https://github.com/bodschut) ([#2550](https://github.com/fishtown-analytics/dbt/pull/2550))