PQTest info's Source reports "memory" even though connector is saved to disk

[bgribaudo]

For connectors created with the SDK, the Source property output by PQTest.exe info indicates "memory" even though the connector is saved to disk.

I'm presuming that "memory" here refers to something other than the connector's physical location. Is that true, or is the fact that "memory" is output a bug?

Example:

> PQTest.exe info --extension "Test.mez" -p 

[
  {
    "Source": "Memory(Test.mez)",
    ....

Thanks,
Ben

--
Context:
Microsoft.PowerQuery.SdkTools.2.114.4

[albertli-msft]

Hi @bgribaudo,

Thanks for using the vscode-powerquery-sdk,

True, we loaded the connector's mez file into a memory provider on purpose, otherwise it might cause resource racing problems like vsc would create fs.watcher to lock the files opened and write back if it needed while we were reading it.

True, the term memory might be misleading or unneeded.

We should consider removing it right? @mattmasson 😀

[mattmasson]

I guess this is a case of implementation details leaking out.

M extensions are loaded using "Library Providers". The Filesystem provider is used to load (and monitor) all extensions in a directory (ex. the "Custom Connectors" folder in PBI Desktop). Individual .mez files are read from disk and loaded using the Memory provider. The Source value in the introspection results includes the type of provider that was used to load the library.

We could modify the introspection query to replace "Memory" with something else, but my vote would be to leave it as-is.

[bgribaudo]

Sounds good. Thanks, Matt.

Down the road, could some documentation / command help could be added explaining what that option value means so that people don't need to dig for this thread?