What causes "no matching files found" in golang/go?

Verify the path in the //go:embed directive exists relative to the .go file's package directory.

no matching files found

Error message

no matching files found

What it means

After processing a single pattern (end of the per-pattern loop body at line 2304), if the accumulated `list` is empty the pattern matched nothing at all — no file, no directory, nothing. This is distinct from 889 (a directory matched but was empty): here the glob itself produced no usable match. It is an error rather than a silent skip so that misspelled embed patterns are caught at build time.

Source

Thrown at src/cmd/go/internal/load/pkg.go:2305

					}
					count++
					if have[rel] != pid {
						have[rel] = pid
						list = append(list, rel)
					}
					return nil
				})
				if err != nil {
					return nil, nil, err
				}
				if count == 0 {
					return nil, nil, fmt.Errorf("cannot embed directory %s: contains no embeddable files", rel)
				}
			}
		}

		if len(list) == 0 {
			return nil, nil, fmt.Errorf("no matching files found")
		}
		sort.Strings(list)
		pmap[pattern] = list
	}

	for file := range have {
		files = append(files, file)
	}
	sort.Strings(files)
	return files, pmap, nil
}

func validEmbedPattern(pattern string) bool {
	return pattern != "." && fs.ValidPath(pattern)
}

// isBadEmbedName reports whether name is the base name of a file that
// can't or won't be included in modules and therefore shouldn't be treated

View on GitHub (pinned to b6b368adc5)

Solutions

Verify the path in the //go:embed directive exists relative to the .go file's package directory.
Check git tracking: `git ls-files <pattern>` — if empty, the files are not in the repo.
Fix typos and case; embed patterns are case-sensitive on all platforms.

Example fix

// before: //go:embed statik
// after: //go:embed static

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

// Verify an embed pattern resolves to at least one match before building.
package embedcheck

import (
	"errors"
	"os"
	"path/filepath"
)

func EmbedPatternMatches(pkgDir, pattern string) error {
	matches, err := filepath.Glob(filepath.Join(pkgDir, pattern))
	if err != nil {
		return errors.New("bad embed pattern: " + err.Error())
	}
	if len(matches) == 0 {
		return errors.New("embed pattern matched nothing: " + pattern)
	}
	return nil
}

Prevention

Always `git ls-files <pattern>` after writing a //go:embed line — if it is empty in git, it will be empty in CI.
Treat embed patterns as case-sensitive on all platforms.

When it happens

Trigger: //go:embed of a path that does not exist under the package directory, or that only matches hidden/badly-named files at the top level (no directory descent). E.g. `//go:embed typo.txt`.

Common situations: Typo in the pattern; assets not yet checked in; CI building from a shallow checkout that omits the assets; case mismatch in the pattern.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of golang/go@b6b368adc5 (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8cd252602a1fbd8a. Report an issue: GitHub.