Hugo fails to report error when theme directory is empty

feature
1

Hugo fails to report error when theme directory is empty for a given theme. This is a problem for new users who are testing various themes for suitability and have followed documented procedures to load all themes which creates empty directories in some cases.
Entry specifying nixon theme where directory is empty:
hugo server -D --baseURL=“http://192.168.1.140/” --bind=“192.168.1.140” -t nixon --port=80
No apparent error thrown:
| EN
±-----------------±—+
Pages | 4
Paginator pages | 0
Non-page files | 0
Static files | 0
Processed images | 0
Aliases | 0
Sitemaps | 1
Cleaned | 0

Total in 31 ms
Watching for changes in /home/quickstart/{content,data,layouts,static}
Serving pages from memory
Running in Fast Render Mode. For full rebuilds on change: hugo server --disableFastRender
Web Server is available at http://192.168.1.140:80/ (bind address 192.168.1.140)
Press Ctrl+C to stop

End result for the user is a website which renders pre tags or 404. This also becomes confusing because browser sometimes retains previously loaded theme in cache and does not refresh unless ctrl f5 is issued.

Need to mention --debug does identify the issue among all the other lines.
WARN 2018/02/06 22:58:38 Unable to find Static Directory:

Would it be worth considering an enhancement to show an error when this condition occurs?

2

What is the error? I may need an empty theme directory, to be filled in programatically. What is it you’re suggesting as the error? :thinking:

3

I am not sure what exactly can be done to address this issue. I only know I spent some time trying to figure out why some themes were not working, only to find out the theme directory had nothing in it. Hugo server was serving a blank home page with pre tags and other pages which worked fine using a previous theme, were giving 404 errors. There was no indication of a problem from Hugo server that I could see.
I do know hugo does some configuration checks, like checking for the config file, which, if does not exist refers the user to “hugo help new”… and lists the directory… Which is great… It would not be necessary to make additional configuration checks fatal, possibly warn the user to run the --debug for analysis.
Maybe some further checks could be considered as a future enhancement?
Regards,

5