GoogleContainerTools/skaffold · error

parsing manifests file into manifest list object: %w

Error message

parsing manifests file into manifest list object: %w

What it means

After opening a hydrated manifest file, GetManifestsFromHydratedManifests parses it via manifest.Load into a ManifestList. If the file content is not a valid manifest (corrupt YAML, empty file, wrong format), this error wraps the parse failure. It indicates the hydrated output is not deployable manifest content.

Source

Thrown at pkg/skaffold/deploy/util/util.go:188

				Resource: r.Name,
			}, nil
		}
	}

	return false, schema.GroupVersionResource{}, fmt.Errorf("could not find resource for %s", gvk.String())
}

func GetManifestsFromHydratedManifests(ctx context.Context, hydratedManifests []string) (manifest.ManifestList, error) {
	var manifests manifest.ManifestList
	for _, path := range hydratedManifests {
		f, err := os.Open(path)
		if err != nil {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("opening hydrated manifest at %s: %w", path, err)
		}
		defer f.Close()
		ms, err := manifest.Load(f)
		if err != nil {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("parsing manifests file into manifest list object: %w", err)
		}
		manifests = append(manifests, ms...)
	}

	return manifests, nil
}

type tagErr struct {
	tag string
	err error
}

// ImageTags generates tags for a list of artifacts
func ImageTags(ctx context.Context, runCtx *runcontext.RunContext, tagger tag.Tagger, out io.Writer, artifacts []*latest.Artifact) (tag.ImageTags, error) {
	start := time.Now()
	maxWorkers := runtime.GOMAXPROCS(0)

	if len(artifacts) > 0 {

View on GitHub (pinned to a1189de023)

Solutions

1. Validate each file parses: kubectl apply --dry-run=client -f <path> to find the malformed file
2. Re-run the hydrate step to regenerate clean manifest output
3. Check the producing tool (kustomize/helm) for errors that produced invalid YAML
4. Confirm only manifest files are included in the hydratedManifests list

Example fix

// before
ms, err := manifest.Load(f)
if err != nil {
	return nil, fmt.Errorf("parsing manifests file into manifest list object: %w", err)
}
// after
ms, err := manifest.Load(f)
if err != nil {
	return nil, fmt.Errorf("parsing manifests file into manifest list object: %w", err)
}

func validateManifestYAML(path string) error {
	data, err := os.ReadFile(path)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}
	if len(bytes.TrimSpace(data)) == 0 {
		return fmt.Errorf("manifest file %s is empty", path)
	}
	var docs []map[string]interface{}
	if err := yaml.Unmarshal(data, &docs); err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("manifest file %s is not valid YAML: %w", path, err)
	}
	return nil
}

manifests, err := GetManifestsFromHydratedManifests(ctx, paths)
if err != nil {
	if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "parsing manifests file") {
		return fmt.Errorf("hydrated output invalid — regenerate via hydrate step: %w", err)
	}
	return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling GetManifestsFromHydratedManifests on files that are empty, truncated, contain invalid YAML, or are not Kubernetes manifests (e.g. a log file or partial write landed in the manifest list).

Common situations: A hydrate/transform step crashed mid-write leaving truncated YAML; Kustomize/Helm output generation failed but wrote a stub file; encoding issues or template placeholders left unparsed; a non-manifest file was passed in hydratedManifests.

Related errors

• reading Kubernetes YAML: %w
• invalid local-registry-hosting ConfigMap
• CONFIG_MISSING_MANIFEST_FILE_ERR
• rendering manifests: %w
• rendering manifests: %w

AI-assisted analysis of GoogleContainerTools/skaffold@a1189de023 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d2f8e0bee6b303da. Report an issue: GitHub.