zed-industries/zed · error · ValueError

build ids may only contain lowercase letters, numbers, '.',

Error message

build ids may only contain lowercase letters, numbers, '.', '_', and '-'

What it means

validate_build_id() rejects any build id that doesn't survive source.sanitize_namespace() unchanged: only lowercase letters, digits, '.', '_' and '-' are allowed. The restriction exists because build ids feed into namespace labels (e.g. Modal namespaces) with a limited charset; anything that sanitizes differently (uppercase, spaces, slashes) would silently split a run's identity from its label.

Source

Thrown at crates/eval_cli/zed_eval/builds.py:11

from __future__ import annotations

import argparse
from typing import Any

from . import source


def validate_build_id(build_id: str | None) -> None:
    if build_id and source.sanitize_namespace(build_id) != build_id:
        raise ValueError(
            "build ids may only contain lowercase letters, numbers, '.', '_', and '-'"
        )


def prepare_build_request(
    *,
    base_sha: str | None,
    patch_path: str | None,
    build_id: str | None,
    allow_untracked: bool,
    require_clean: bool,
    repo_url: str | None,
    clean_source: bool = False,
    source_label: str | None = None,
    pre_resolved_base_sha: str | None = None,
) -> dict[str, Any]:
    validate_build_id(build_id)
    source_info, patch = source.prepare_build_source(

View on GitHub (pinned to bc538def45)

Solutions

1. Lowercase the id and map disallowed characters to '-' or '_' before passing it
2. Slugify derived ids: `echo "$branch" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | tr -c 'a-z0-9._-' '-'`
3. If the id looks valid, check for invisible leading/trailing whitespace

Example fix

# before
validate_build_id("Feature/Login-Fix")   # ValueError

# after
validate_build_id("feature-login-fix")

import re
BUILD_ID_RE = re.compile(r"^[a-z0-9._-]+$")
if build_id and not BUILD_ID_RE.fullmatch(build_id):
    raise SystemExit("build id must match [a-z0-9._-]+")

import re

def is_valid_build_id(build_id):
    return re.fullmatch(r"[a-z0-9._-]+", build_id) is not None

try:
    validate_build_id(build_id)
except ValueError:
    import re
    build_id = re.sub(r"[^a-z0-9._-]", "-", build_id.lower())
    validate_build_id(build_id)

When it happens

Trigger: Passing a build id containing uppercase letters, spaces, or other punctuation ("Zed Build/2024"); ids auto-derived from branch names with '/' or uppercase; timestamp ids using 'T' and ':'.

Common situations: Deriving build ids from git branch names (feature/Login-Fix); pasting human-readable labels; CI run identifiers with ISO-8601 punctuation.

Related errors

• unknown benchmark '{benchmark_id}' (valid: {valid})
• unknown benchmark '{selector}' (valid: {valid})
• app '{args.app_name}' not deployed (or function '{function_n
• benchmark {benchmark['id']} path dataset requires repo_url
• unexpected response for issue {number}

AI-assisted analysis of zed-industries/zed@bc538def45 (2026-08-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/90ce86eda70ccc50. Report an issue: GitHub.