Oh man, some errors are so sudden and out of the blue that they give you a real scare; when in reality they’re really nothing to worry about. Like this error dump here:
A scary looking benevolent error dump while packaging an SPFx solution
What was the issue
I’ve been following the SPFx tutorial for a few days now and, the steps I’ve done more than a few times, I’m quite confident to do them on my own. So, I did “gulp build”. I did “gulp build –ship”. I did “gulp package-solution –ship” and… tadah! Wow, these looked scary.
What did I try
That error message was a bit misleading. It clearly says:
Error: The webparts manifests list is empty. Please ensure you have done a build and that your config file is pointed at the correct folder
So, what did I try? I tried to build again. And, then I tried again. Had I forgotten the –ship flag. Nope. What was the problem then? I’ve been doing this all week. What’s wrong with this specific webpart?
What was the solution
Nope. I somehow got into a losing argument without even noticing. The issue was not that I had to “gulp build –ship”. The problem was that I had forgotten to “gulp bundle –ship”. The correct sequence is
gulp bundle --ship gulp package-solution --ship
