gohugoio/hugo · error

%q: %w

Error message

%q: %w

What it means

Generic page-error wrapper from pageMetaSource.wrapError when the source file (m.f) is nil (page.go:784). It prepends the page's logical path (%q) to an inner error so the failing page is identifiable even when no file metadata is available to attach a richer file-position annotation.

Source

Thrown at hugolib/page.go:784

type renderStringOpts struct {
	Display string
	Markup  string
}

var defaultRenderStringOpts = renderStringOpts{
	Display: "inline",
	Markup:  "", // Will inherit the page's value when not set.
}

func (m *pageMetaSource) wrapError(err error, sourceFs afero.Fs) error {
	if err == nil {
		panic("wrapError with nil")
	}

	if m.f == nil {
		// No more details to add.
		return fmt.Errorf("%q: %w", m.Path(), err)
	}

	return hugofs.AddFileInfoToError(err, m.f.FileInfo(), sourceFs)
}

// wrapError adds some more context to the given error if possible/needed
func (ps *pageState) wrapError(err error) error {
	return ps.m.wrapError(err, ps.s.h.SourceFs)
}

func (ps *pageState) getPageInfoForError() string {
	s := fmt.Sprintf("kind: %q, path: %q", ps.Kind(), ps.Path())
	if ps.File() != nil {
		s += fmt.Sprintf(", file: %q", ps.File().Filename())
	}
	return s
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 52c9bd7908)

Solutions

1. Read the inner %w after the colon — that is the actionable error.
2. If the page is synthetic/adapter-generated, check the data source feeding it.
3. If you expected a file-backed page, investigate why FileInfo is nil (early construction failure upstream).

if err := page.WrapError(srcErr); err != nil {
    // no file metadata; act on errors.Unwrap for the real cause
    cause := errors.Unwrap(err)
}

When it happens

Trigger: Any page-level error where the page has no backing FileInfo (m.f == nil) — e.g. a synthetic/adapter page or a page constructed in memory — and wrapError is called to add context. The wrapped %w is the originating error.

Common situations: Content-adapter/data-driven pages, headless or programmatic pages, or error paths reached during early page construction before a file is bound. Seeing this often means the real cause is in the inner %w; the path prefix just names the page.

Related errors

• [%s] page %q: " + format + ": %w
• invalid Page received in Ref
• invalid Page received in RelRef
• failed to create page from file %q: %w
• failed to create page meta from file %q: %w

AI-assisted analysis of gohugoio/hugo@52c9bd7908 (2026-08-09). Data as JSON: /api/errors/4c0b0219bc38cfe5. Report an issue: GitHub.