gatsbyjs/gatsby · error

Syntax error in "${absPath}": ${err.message} ${codeFrame}

Error message

Syntax error in "${absPath}":
${err.message}
${codeFrame}

What it means

Fires when Babel fails to parse a file during static export analysis in staticallyAnalyzeExports: because the caught error is a SyntaxError, the panic pretty-prints it with a code frame pinpointing the offending line/column of the module.

Source

Thrown at packages/gatsby/src/bootstrap/resolve-module-exports.ts:42

  const code = fs.readFileSync(absPath, `utf8`) // get file contents

  let ast
  try {
    ast = babelParseToAst(code, absPath)
  } catch (err) {
    if (err instanceof SyntaxError) {
      // Pretty print syntax errors
      const codeFrame = codeFrameColumns(
        code,
        {
          start: (err as unknown as { loc: SourceLocation["start"] }).loc,
        },
        {
          highlightCode: true,
        }
      )

      report.panic(
        `Syntax error in "${absPath}":\n${err.message}\n${codeFrame}`
      )
    } else {
      // if it's not syntax error, just throw it
      throw err
    }
  }

  let isCommonJS = false
  let isES6 = false

  // extract names of exports from file
  traverse(ast, {
    // Check if the file is using ES6 imports
    ImportDeclaration: function ImportDeclaration() {
      isES6 = true
    },

View on GitHub (pinned to e85d62f177)

Solutions

1. Fix the JavaScript syntax error at the location shown in the code frame

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at packages/gatsby/src/bootstrap/resolve-module-exports.ts:42 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of gatsbyjs/gatsby@e85d62f177 (2026-08-26). Data as JSON: /api/errors/183b8be4ca804ec1. Report an issue: GitHub.