How do I use Power BI Desktop with version control?

Question

Greetings beloved comrades,

I am building a series of power bi dashboards, and as they go into production I'd like to put them into TFS. However, due to the large datasets involved, some of these report definitions are quite large (1.6GB).

It doesn't seem like a good idea to force TFS to store all of the actual data, when only the definition really matters.

Is there a simple way to remove the data from a .pbix file or save only the definition?

Edit: Looks like Microsoft has rendered this question obsolete with the creation of PowerBI templates. April Update for PowerBI Nevertheless, the workaround in the answer could be used for other purposes.

Answer 1

Convert the pbix files to a pbit file using "Save As..." option, and then version those pbit files in TFS, using Visual Studio, but controlling them on the server.

Answer 2

This approach is a bit interesting. When you commit a .pbix it uploads it to Premium, extracts the JSON metadata for the model, and then commits that back to DevOps next to the .pbix. That way you can see a diff over time of the model metadata including Power Query changes, measure changes, etc.