Issue when creating an external table in Presto Hive Connector

[imjalpreet]

In the current implementation of CREATE TABLE WITH (external_location), if the external location does not already exist, Presto raises an exception stating failed: External location must be a directory.

presto/presto-hive/src/main/java/com/facebook/presto/hive/HiveMetadata.java

Line 1331 in 261613b

if (!hdfsEnvironment.getFileSystem(context, path).isDirectory(path)) {

I wanted to get the community's view on whether Presto should create the directory if it doesn't exist rather than throwing the error. We could check if the location exists before verifying if it is a directory.

We allow CREATE SCHEMA WITH (location) even if the specified location does not exist. The missing directories will be created whenever a managed table is created under the schema.