Error applying external table with partitions without hive_compatible_partitions=true

[cloventt]

Kia ora, I am trying to use this module to create an external table in an Athena/Glue catalog.

When I apply the config (with dbt run-operation stage_external_sources) I receive this output:

20:39:46  Running with dbt=1.8.9
20:39:47  Registered adapter: athena=1.8.4
20:39:47  Found 12 models, 5 sources, 626 macros, 5 unit tests
20:39:47  1 of 1 START external source intermediate.test_table
20:39:52  Encountered an error while running operation: Runtime Error
  Compilation Error
    'dict object' has no attribute 'vals'

    > in macro refresh_external_table (macros/common/refresh_external_table.sql)
    > called by macro athena__get_external_build_plan (macros/get_external_build_plan.sql)
    > called by macro get_external_build_plan (macros/common/get_external_build_plan.sql)
    > called by macro stage_external_sources (macros/common/stage_external_sources.sql)
    > called by <Unknown>

My sources file is similar to this:

version: 2

sources:
  - name: intermediate
    tables:
      - name: test_table
        database: awscatalog
        external:
          location: '<s3 bucket path>'
          row_format: "SERDE 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.parquet.serde.ParquetHiveSerDe'"
          table_properties: ('partition_filtering.enabled' = 'true','projection.day.type' = 'date','projection.day.range' = '2024-02-01,NOW','projection.day.format' = 'yyyy-MM-dd','projection.hour.type' = 'enum','projection.enabled' = 'true','projection.hour.values' = '00,01,02,03,04,05,06,07,08,09,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23')
          partitions:
            - name: day
              data_type: string
            - name: hour
              data_type: string
        columns:
          - name: timestamp
            data_type: string
          - name: dealid
            data_type: string
          - name: creativeid
            data_type: string
          - name: campaignid
            data_type: string
          - name: slotid
            data_type: string

My installed packages file is as so:

packages:
  - package: dbt-labs/dbt_utils
    version: 1.3.0
  - package: dbt-labs/dbt_external_tables
    version: [ '0.8.7' ]
  - git: https://github.com/dbt-athena/dbt-athena-external-tables.git
    revision: 5af3301ce8e56adebaadf09a90be5740aaa15677  # pinned to a specific version rather than main

And my dbt_project.yml includes:

dispatch:
  - macro_namespace: dbt_external_tables
    search_order: [dbt_athena_external_tables, dbt_external_tables]

The issue seems to be identical to dbt-labs/dbt-external-tables#208 . From looking at the example models, I tried adding hive_compatible_partitions: true to the source config, and this cleared the issue and the table was created without issue.

If this is a misconfiguration, I feel the problem needs to be made clearer in the dbt output.