oraios/serena · error · ValueError

Symbol location does not contain a valid position in a file

Error message

Symbol location does not contain a valid position in a file

What it means

find_referencing_symbols_by_location needs an absolute position (file + line + column) to ask the language server for references. If the passed LanguageServerSymbolLocation lacks a position in file, it raises this ValueError instead of sending a malformed request.

Source

Thrown at src/serena/symbol.py:857

        exclude_kinds: Sequence[SymbolKind] | None = None,
    ) -> list[ReferenceInLanguageServerSymbol]:
        """
        Find all symbols that reference the symbol at the given location.

        :param symbol_location: the location of the symbol for which to find references.
            Does not need to include an end_line, as it is unused in the search.
        :param include_body: whether to include the body of all symbols in the result.
            Not recommended, as the referencing symbols will often be files, and thus the bodies will be very long.
            Note: you can filter out the bodies of the children if you set include_children_body=False
            in the to_dict method.
        :param include_kinds: an optional sequence of ints representing the LSP symbol kind.
            If provided, only symbols of the given kinds will be included in the result.
        :param exclude_kinds: If provided, symbols of the given kinds will be excluded from the result.
            Takes precedence over include_kinds.
        :return: a list of symbols that reference the given symbol
        """
        if not symbol_location.has_position_in_file():
            raise ValueError("Symbol location does not contain a valid position in a file")
        assert symbol_location.relative_path is not None
        assert symbol_location.line is not None
        assert symbol_location.column is not None
        lang_server = self.get_language_server(symbol_location.relative_path)
        references = lang_server.request_referencing_symbols(
            relative_file_path=symbol_location.relative_path,
            line=symbol_location.line,
            column=symbol_location.column,
            include_imports=False,
            include_self=False,
            include_body=include_body,
            include_file_symbols=True,
        )

        if include_kinds is not None:
            references = [s for s in references if s.symbol["kind"] in include_kinds]

        if exclude_kinds is not None:

View on GitHub (pinned to 7fcbca7e62)

Solutions

1. Check symbol_location.has_position_in_file() before calling and skip or re-resolve symbols without positions
2. Obtain the location from a full symbol lookup (find_unique) rather than partial search data
3. Supply line/column explicitly if you know the definition site

Example fix

// before
refs = mgr.find_referencing_symbols_by_location(loc)  # loc has no position
// after
if loc.has_position_in_file():
    refs = mgr.find_referencing_symbols_by_location(loc)

if not symbol_location.has_position_in_file():
    raise SkipSymbol("location lacks line/column")

def is_located(loc) -> bool:
    return loc.has_position_in_file() and loc.relative_path is not None

try:
    refs = mgr.find_referencing_symbols_by_location(loc)
except ValueError as e:
    if "valid position in a file" in str(e):
        refs = re_resolve_and_find_refs(loc)
    else:
        raise

When it happens

Trigger: Constructing a location from a symbol whose position is None (e.g. module-level symbols, references without ranges) and passing it to find_referencing_symbols/get_symbol_diagnostics_by_location.

Common situations: Using a location obtained from a stale or non-definitional symbol; hand-building a LanguageServerSymbolLocation from search results that omitted line/column; language servers that return no selection range for certain constructs.

Related errors

• Project '{project_root_or_name}' is not registered with Sere
• Tool '{req.tool_name}' is not read-only and cannot be execut
• Body start position is not defined for {self}
• Body end position is not defined for {self}
• Body line numbers could not be determined for {self.get_name

AI-assisted analysis of oraios/serena@7fcbca7e62 (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/ae9a5f750def6113. Report an issue: GitHub.