GoogleContainerTools/skaffold · error

failed to create manifest file: %w

Error message

failed to create manifest file: %w

What it means

Once the manifest is downloaded, downloadFromURL creates a temp file (*.yaml) inside the staging dir with os.CreateTemp. If file creation fails, the error is wrapped as 'failed to create manifest file'.

Source

Thrown at pkg/skaffold/kubernetes/manifest/url.go:63

		paths = append(paths, out)
	}
	return paths, nil
}

func downloadFromURL(destDir string, manifest string) (string, error) {
	if manifest == "" || !util.IsURL(manifest) {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("%s is not a valid URL", manifest)
	}

	resp, err := http.Get(manifest)
	if err != nil {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("failed to download manifest from %s, err : %w", manifest, err)
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()

	f, err := os.CreateTemp(destDir, "*.yaml")
	if err != nil {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("failed to create manifest file: %w", err)
	}
	defer f.Close()
	_, err = io.Copy(f, resp.Body)
	if err != nil {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("failed to write manifest to file, err: %w", err)
	}

	return f.Name(), nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to a1189de023)

Solutions

1. Ensure the staging tmp directory is writable by the current user
2. Free disk space / check inodes
3. Check ulimit -n for file-descriptor exhaustion and close leaking handles

if st, err := os.Stat(destDir); err != nil || !st.IsDir() {
    return fmt.Errorf("dest dir %q unusable: %w", destDir, err)
}

if err != nil {
    if errors.Is(err, os.ErrPermission) || errors.Is(err, syscall.ENOSPC) {
        // fix permissions / free space, then retry
    }
    return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: os.CreateTemp failing in destDir because the directory does not exist (MkdirAll failed silently upstream is not possible — here mostly permission denied, disk full, or too many open files).

Common situations: Read-only or full filesystem; running as non-root in a container without write access to the tmp dir; fd exhaustion in long-running processes.

Related errors

• writing string: %w
• writing string: %w
• writing buffer contents to file: %w
• cannot create temp file: %w
• failed to create the tmp directory: %w

AI-assisted analysis of GoogleContainerTools/skaffold@a1189de023 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/db0afc19b033b27f. Report an issue: GitHub.