GoogleContainerTools/skaffold · error

marshaling new configs: %w

Error message

marshaling new configs: %w

What it means

After modifying the in-memory config set, marshalConfigSetForFile re-serializes all skaffold configs with yaml.MarshalWithSeparator before writing them back. If marshaling fails, the error "marshaling new configs: %w" is returned and the file is left untouched. This indicates the modified config structures cannot be represented as YAML by the skaffold marshaler.

Source

Thrown at pkg/skaffold/inspect/helper.go:83

		var parsed yamlv3.Node
		err := decoder.Decode(&parsed)
		if err == io.EOF {
			break
		}
		if err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("unable to parse YAML: %w", err)
		}
		// parsed content is a document so the `Content` slice has exactly one element
		sl = append(sl, parsed.Content[0])
	}

	for i, cfg := range cfgs {
		sl[cfg.SourceIndex] = cfgs[i].SkaffoldConfig
	}

	newCfgs, err := yaml.MarshalWithSeparator(sl)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("marshaling new configs: %w", err)
	}
	if err := WriteFileFunc(filename, newCfgs); err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("writing config file: %w", err)
	}
	return nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to a1189de023)

Solutions

1. Inspect the wrapped error to identify the offending field; fix the input flags/values passed to the inspect command.
2. Upgrade or downgrade skaffold — this often indicates an incompatibility between the CLI version and the config schema.
3. Edit skaffold.yaml manually instead of using the inspect modify command.

var cfgs config.SkaffoldConfigSet
if err := yaml.UnmarshalStrict(data, &cfgs); err != nil {
    return err // configs must round-trip before modifying
}

if err := marshalConfigSetForFile(f, cfgs); err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "marshaling new configs") {
        // leave original file intact, report marshal failure
    }
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling `skaffold inspect` modify commands whose resulting SkaffoldConfig values fail yaml.MarshalWithSeparator (e.g. unsupported/nil field values produced by the modification logic).

Common situations: Modifying profiles or port-forward resources with values that don't round-trip through the skaffold YAML marshaller; a skaffold version bug where a newly added field lacks a marshaler mapping.

Related errors

• unable to parse YAML: %w
• marshalling configuration: %w
• invalid local-registry-hosting ConfigMap
• CONFIG_ZERO_FOUND_ERR
• CONFIG_DUPLICATE_NAMES_SAME_FILE_ERR

AI-assisted analysis of GoogleContainerTools/skaffold@a1189de023 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/c7bc7ce441401ebf. Report an issue: GitHub.