[Bug] copy_partitions with static partitions list produces empty statement

[alexandru-pisarenco-dh]

Is this a new bug in dbt-bigquery?

• I believe this is a new bug in dbt-bigquery
• I have searched the existing issues, and I could not find an existing issue for this bug

Current Behavior

When an incremental load with copy_partitions=True, and partitions=[... list of partitions ...] is used, the macro bq_static_insert_overwrite_sql does not produce any SQL statements, which leads the BigQuery client to trigger an error.

On top of that, because this code:

  -- 2. clean up the temp table
  drop table if exists {{ tmp_relation }};

is only executed when copy_partitions=False, the temp table is not deleted.

Expected Behavior

A non-empty statement should be produced by the macro and sent to dbt. I figure that drop table if exists {{tmp_relation}}; should just be taken out of any conditional blocks and just always be there.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Create a new model with the following config:

{{
  config(
    materialized="incremental",
    partition_by={
      "field": "partition_date",
      "data_type": "date",
      "granularity": "day",
      "copy_partitions": true,
    },
    incremental_strategy="insert_overwrite",
    partitions=["2024-08-13", "2024-08-14"]
  )
}}

2. Run the model

Relevant log output

14:48:05  Completed with 1 error and 0 warnings:
14:48:05  
14:48:05    Database Error in model the_model (models/the_model.sql)
  Syntax error: Unexpected end of statement at [1:331]
  compiled Code at /Users/alex/the_project/target/run/the_project/models/the_model.sql

Environment

- OS: MacOS
- Python: 3.10.14
- dbt-core: 1.8.6
- dbt-bigquery: 1.8.2

Additional Context

No response

[github-christophe-oudar]

It wasn't supported but I wrote dbt-labs/dbt-bigquery#1351 to do so.
As a workaround, you might just use the updated macros and use them as a macro override to check in your own dbt project.