Linting dbt_utils.star with Sqlfluff has an empty select

[dbeatty10]

Describe the bug

Previously raised by @swanjson here and again by sam I here:

I have a dbt project that uses the dbt_utils.star macro that will not pass sqlfluff linting checks because the table that star is pointing at doesn’t exist yet. The current behavior of the macro is to return nothing in this situation, but it creates compiled code that looks like this:

select

from tablename

Code like this causes sqlfluff to raise a parsing error.

Steps to reproduce

1. Create some_model.sql like:

   select
       {{ dbt_utils.star(from=ref('some_table'), except=['some_column']) }}
   from ref('some_table')
   

2. Make sure it doesn't exist yet:

   drop table {{ ref('some_table') }}
   

3. Run dbt compile
4. Check the compiled SQL in target/compiled/{PROJECT_NAME}/models/some_model.sql

Expected results

select
    *
from tablename

Actual results

select

from tablename

Workaround

dbt run before linting (not ideal)