GoogleContainerTools/skaffold · critical

parsing api version: %w

Error message

parsing api version: %w

What it means

ParseConfig streams the YAML documents to discover each document's apiVersion. If the YAML decode of a document fails (not EOF), this wrapped error is returned. Note this is about decode failure — an unknown but successfully parsed version produces ConfigUnknownAPIVersionErr instead.

Source

Thrown at pkg/skaffold/schema/versions.go:272

// configFactoryFromAPIVersion checks that all configs in the input stream have the same API version, and returns a function to create a config with that API version.
func configFactoryFromAPIVersion(buf []byte) ([]func() util.VersionedConfig, error) {
	// This is to quickly check that it's possibly a skaffold.yaml,
	// without parsing the whole file.
	if !bytes.Contains(buf, []byte("apiVersion")) {
		return nil, errors.New("missing apiVersion")
	}

	var factories []func() util.VersionedConfig
	b := bytes.NewReader(buf)
	decoder := yaml.NewDecoder(b)
	for {
		var v APIVersion
		err := decoder.Decode(&v)
		if err == io.EOF {
			break
		}
		if err != nil {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("parsing api version: %w", err)
		}
		factory, present := AllVersions.Find(v.Version)
		if !present {
			return nil, sErrors.ConfigUnknownAPIVersionErr(v.Version)
		}
		factories = append(factories, factory)
	}
	return factories, nil
}

// removeYamlAnchors removes all top-level keys starting with `.` from the input stream so they can be used as YAML anchors
func removeYamlAnchors(buf []byte) ([]byte, error) {
	in := bytes.NewReader(buf)
	var out bytes.Buffer

	decoder := yaml.NewDecoder(in)
	decoder.KnownFields(true)
	encoder := yaml.NewEncoder(&out)

View on GitHub (pinned to a1189de023)

Solutions

1. Run a YAML linter (yamllint) on skaffold.yaml to find syntax errors
2. Fix indentation — use spaces, never tabs
3. Check the wrapped cause (%w) for the exact line/parse problem
4. Restore the file from version control if it was truncated

Example fix

# before (tab indentation breaks YAML)
apiVersion: skaffold/v4beta7
metadata:
	name: app
# after
apiVersion: skaffold/v4beta7
metadata:
  name: app

var raw map[string]interface{}
if err := yaml.Unmarshal(data, &raw); err != nil {
	return fmt.Errorf("skaffold.yaml is not valid YAML: %w", err)
}
if _, ok := raw["apiVersion"]; !ok {
	return errors.New("skaffold.yaml missing apiVersion")
}

_, err := schema.ParseConfig(cfgPath)
if err != nil {
	if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "parsing api version") {
		// surface a YAML-syntax hint to the user and stop
	}
	return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling ParseConfig on a file containing malformed YAML (bad indentation, invalid syntax, wrong types) so the version-decoding pass errors before finding the apiVersion.

Common situations: Hand-edited skaffold.yaml with tab indentation or broken indentation; pasting YAML with smart quotes; truncated file from a failed write; multi-doc file with a corrupt segment.

Related errors

• unable to re-marshal YAML without dotted keys: %w
• unable to parse YAML: %w
• read skaffold config: %w
• `apply` requires at least one manifest argument
• `exec` requires exactly one action to execute

AI-assisted analysis of GoogleContainerTools/skaffold@a1189de023 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5d9ac728c53046f3. Report an issue: GitHub.