GoogleContainerTools/skaffold · error

unable to parse YAML: %w

Error message

unable to parse YAML: %w

What it means

inspect helpers read a skaffold.yaml file and decode each YAML document into a yamlv3.Node to build a config set. If the YAML decoder fails on malformed YAML (bad indentation, duplicate keys, invalid syntax), the error is wrapped as "unable to parse YAML: %w". The file cannot be inspected or modified until it is valid YAML.

Source

Thrown at pkg/skaffold/inspect/helper.go:71

}

func marshalConfigSetForFile(filename string, cfgs parser.SkaffoldConfigSet) error {
	buf, err := ReadFileFunc(filename)
	if err != nil {
		return sErrors.ConfigParsingError(err)
	}
	in := bytes.NewReader(buf)
	decoder := yamlv3.NewDecoder(in)
	decoder.KnownFields(true)
	var sl []interface{}
	for {
		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. Run a YAML linter (yamllint or `yq . skaffold.yaml`) on the file and fix the reported syntax error.
2. Check the wrapped %w detail for the exact line/column and correct indentation (spaces, no tabs).
3. Restore the file from git if recent edits broke it: `git checkout -- skaffold.yaml`.

Example fix

// before (broken skaffold.yaml)
metadata:
	name: app   # tab indent
// after
metadata:
  name: app

var node yaml.Node
if err := yaml.Unmarshal(data, &node); err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("skaffold.yaml invalid: %w", err)
}

if err := inspectCommand(); err != nil {
    var pe *yaml.TypeError
    if errors.As(err, &pe) || strings.Contains(err.Error(), "unable to parse YAML") {
        // surface file/line from wrapped error
    }
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling skaffold inspect commands (e.g. `skaffold inspect modify-port-forward-resources`) against a skaffold.yaml (or file passed via --filename) that contains syntactically invalid YAML documents.

Common situations: Hand-edited skaffold.yaml with broken indentation, tabs mixed with spaces, stray characters, or truncated files after a failed merge/commit.

Understand the failure class

• Parsing and encoding errors: unexpected token, malformed input — why parsers reject input and how to find the real culprit.

Related errors

• parsing manifests file into manifest list object: %w
• marshaling new configs: %w
• yaml to json error: %w
• reading Kubernetes YAML: %w
• reading Kubernetes YAML: %w

AI-assisted analysis of GoogleContainerTools/skaffold@a1189de023 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/1438ed5157c5fc23. Report an issue: GitHub.