[Announcement]: Tabular Editor CLI 0.6.0 is out!

[gronnerup]

Announcement type

New preview release

CLI version (if applicable)

0.6.0

Summary

0.6.0 is out. This release standardizes command naming (canonical long verbs with short aliases preserved - ls, rm, mv still work), removes the legacy te-folder serialization value in favor of database.json, and ships 20+ user-visible bug fixes across parsing, JSON output, and individual commands.

Details

Important

The Tabular Editor CLI is in Limited Public Preview. It is offered for evaluation with a Tabular Editor account; no license is required during preview. Commands, flags, and outputs may change before general availability. The preview build stops functioning after 2026-09-30. We recommend against using the CLI in production CI/CD pipelines during preview.

Breaking changes

• te-folder serialization value has been removed. Use database.json instead - the CLI now uses the same name TE3 Desktop uses ("Folder (database.json)"). Update any --serialization te-folder invocations to --serialization database.json.
• te config show has been removed. Use te config list instead (ls also works). Unlike the other command renames in this release, show is not kept as an alias, so scripts and one-liners that call te config show need to be updated.

Command renames (canonical long verbs, short aliases preserved)

For consistency across the CLI, several commands and subcommands now use long-form canonical names. The old short forms still work as aliases, so existing scripts and muscle memory are safe.

Canonical (new)	Aliases (still accepted)
te list	ls
te remove	rm
te move	mv, rename
te config list	ls
te bpa rules remove, te macro remove, te incremental-refresh remove	rm

New features / improvements

• te with no arguments now drops you into interactive mode by default. When you run te in a terminal (no subcommand, no flags), the CLI launches the REPL instead of printing help. Configurable via the new launchInteractiveMode config key (auto (default), always, never) or the TE_INTERACTIVE environment variable. --non-interactive on the invocation also opts out. Set to never to keep the old help-on-empty behavior.
• --serialization tmsl is now accepted everywhere bim was. Same underlying format; bim remains the canonical name (matches the .bim file extension).
• te query accepts DAX as a positional argument. te query "EVALUATE 'Sales'" now works as shorthand for te query -q "EVALUATE 'Sales'", both in one-shot and inside the interactive REPL.
• te bpa run text output now shows the rule ID in every violation row, easier to pass to --rule <id> or te bpa rules disable.

Bug fixes

Parsing and command-line robustness

• Cleaner errors for invalid --output-format and parse failures.
• Mistyped options are rejected up front (no more silent absorption as positional values).
• Unknown commands exit non-zero (previously exited 0, breaking CI expectations).
• -s, -d, -m short flags are no longer hijacked by TE2 auto-detection.
• Per-command --help "Global" footer now lists the real global flags.

JSON output

• te deploy and te format exit non-zero on failure in JSON mode (previously only text mode did).
• te deploy JSON output now includes the resolved server and database.
• te init honours --output-format csv.

Command-specific

• te connect --local handles thin reports and accepts a name filter to disambiguate multiple Power BI Desktop instances.
• te connect honours the global -s / -d flags (was ignoring them when passed as named options rather than positional).
• te deploy connects to Analysis Services servers instead of wrapping bare hostnames as Power BI workspace URLs.
• te list (formerly te ls) now lists relationships (te list Relationships and te list --type relationship both work).
• te open launches TE3 with a blank workspace when no model argument is passed.
• te save -o <path> honours the file extension to pick the format (.bim writes BIM, .json writes a database.json folder, a bare path writes a TMDL folder).
• te validate and te save no longer crash on auto-date tables.
• te validate rejects --output-format csv up front with an actionable error.
• te vertipaq output can be piped or redirected.
• te vertipaq surfaces a clear error on an unknown table or column filter path.
• te add --source-type query now actually creates a Query partition (previously the flag was silently ignored).
• te bpa run exits non-zero when rules fail to evaluate.
• te interactive supports redirected stdin.
• te macro set accepts multiple property pairs (-q name -i value repeatable) in one command.

Help shape the CLI

The preview thrives on your feedback. If you hit something that doesn't work as expected, or you have an idea we should consider before GA, the fastest way to reach us is here on GitHub:

• Bug reports and feature requests: open an Issue.
• Questions, how-do-I patterns, sharing setups: the Discussions tab.

Before filing a bug, please run te --version and confirm you're on the latest build. Many reports turn out to be things we've already fixed.

Thanks for testing the preview with us. More coming soon.

-- The Tabular Editor team

Related links

• Download: https://tabulareditor.com/download-tabular-editor-cli
• Overview and getting started: https://docs.tabulareditor.com/features/te-cli/te-cli.html
• Command reference: https://docs.tabulareditor.com/features/te-cli/te-cli-commands.html
• Installation: https://docs.tabulareditor.com/features/te-cli/te-cli-install.html
• Migrating from the TE2 command line: https://docs.tabulareditor.com/features/te-cli/te-cli-migrate.html
• Issues: https://github.com/TabularEditor/CLI/issues
• Discussions: https://github.com/TabularEditor/CLI/discussions