v3.21.0

Deprecations

New additions

• Added cli.encoding config section (and matching SNOWFLAKE_CLI_ENCODING_* env vars) to control text encoding in three areas: file_io for reading and writing project files (e.g. SQL files, snowflake.yml), subprocess for decoding output of external processes (e.g. Docker, pip), and stdout for encoding CLI output written to stdout. Setting all three to utf-8 ensures correct Unicode handling on Windows systems where the platform default encoding is not UTF-8.
• Added --no-prompt-exit-repl option and configuration setting to skip the exit confirmation prompt in the SQL REPL.
• Added --server-session-keep-alive global connection flag (plus matching SNOWFLAKE_SERVER_SESSION_KEEP_ALIVE env var and server_session_keep_alive config key) that prevents Snowflake from closing idle sessions. Useful for long-running operations or connections held open between multiple operations.

Fixes and improvements

• Fixed REST API object operations (e.g. snow object create) crashing with ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'snowflake.connector.vendored' when running against the Snowflake Universal Driver (connector-python v5). HTTP error handling now works on both connector v4.x and the Universal Driver v5.
• The snow app setup --compute-pool option and the build_compute_pool / service_compute_pool fields of a snowflake-app entity are now hidden and undocumented (omitted from --help and the generated project-definition JSON schema). They remain fully functional: snow app setup and snow app deploy still honor the DEFAULT_SNOWFLAKE_APPS_BUILD_COMPUTE_POOL / DEFAULT_SNOWFLAKE_APPS_SERVICE_COMPUTE_POOL account parameters and any compute pools configured in snowflake.yml. The ENABLE_APPLICATION_SERVICE_MANAGED_COMPUTE_POOL and ENABLE_APPLICATION_SERVICE_MANAGED_COMPUTE_POOL_FALLBACK parameter checks (and the related deploy-time warning) have been removed.
• Fixed snow app setup incorrectly treating system-default parameter values as admin-configured values. After running ALTER ACCOUNT UNSET on DEFAULT_SNOWFLAKE_APPS_BUILD_COMPUTE_POOL or DEFAULT_SNOWFLAKE_APPS_SERVICE_COMPUTE_POOL, those fields no longer appear in the generated snowflake.yml or --dry-run output.
• Upgraded pip from 26.1.1 to 26.1.2.
• snow app setup and snow app deploy now default to a workspace (instead of a stage) for app code whenever the resolved destination is a personal database (USER$<user>), which do not support stages. An explicitly configured code_stage is still honored, with a warning when the destination is a personal database.
• Fixed snow app deploy failing on Windows when uploading app code to a workspace (connector error 253006, ER_FILE_NOT_EXISTS) due to a malformed local file URI.
• Fixed snow app deploy failing with connector error 253006 when an app's files live under directories whose names contain glob metacharacters — for example Next.js dynamic-route directories such as [id] or [...slug]. The connector expands PUT sources as glob patterns, so the unescaped local path matched nothing (File doesn't exist) or a same-named sibling directory (Not a file but a directory). Local file paths are now escaped before being passed to PUT. This affected the workspace upload path used for personal-database destinations.
• snow app deploy now uploads app code to a stage one file at a time (preserving the directory structure) instead of via a recursive PUT <dir>/*, and no longer deletes the local bundle during upload. The per-file form also avoids the directory-matching glob behind connector error 253006.
• The build_eai field of a snowflake-app entity can now be specified as a bare string (e.g. build_eai: MY_EAI) in addition to the existing build_eai:\n name: MY_EAI object form.
• snow app setup now honors the --warehouse, --database, and --schema connection options as explicit overrides for the generated snowflake.yml, taking precedence over account parameters and the connection defaults. This lets users target a warehouse, database, or schema other than the account defaults. When --database is specified, --schema must also be specified.
• snow dcm commands now use the system temporary folder to bundle project files before uploading, rather than creating the output project directory and dropping it afterward
• snow dbt no longer rejects valid --dbt-version values (e.g. 2.0.0-preview.175) that don't match a hard-coded client-side regex. Versions are now validated against the server's supported list, with unsupported versions failing fast and listing the actual supported set.
• Fixed snow app commands (e.g. snow app deploy, snow app validate) failing on Windows with a UnicodeDecodeError when snowflake.yml contained non-ASCII characters (e.g. a non-Latin app title or description). The snow app command group now defaults to reading and writing snowflake.yml as UTF-8 instead of falling back to the platform default code page (cp1252/cp932 on Windows). An explicit cli.encoding.file_io setting still takes precedence when configured; UTF-8 is only the default for snow app commands. Other commands continue to honor the cli.encoding.file_io setting / platform default when reading project files.
• The --deploy-only flag of snow app deploy has been renamed to --promote-only. The previous --deploy-only name continues to work as a hidden alias for now, but this backward compatibility is temporary and will be removed soon.
• snow app deploy now drops and recreates the code stage before uploading (instead of clearing it with REMOVE) so each deploy always starts from an empty stage. This prevents stale files from a previous deploy from being mixed into the build, which could produce incorrect or conflicting build artifacts.
• snow app deploy now uploads app code files in parallel (up to 5 at a time) instead of one at a time, reducing upload time for apps with many files. This applies to both the stage and workspace upload paths.