Generated documentation fails validation

[jedesroches]

Terraform CLI and terraform-plugin-docs Versions

$ terraform version
Terraform v1.9.8
on darwin_amd64

Your version of Terraform is out of date! The latest version
is 1.10.5. You can update by downloading from https://www.terraform.io/downloads.html

---

$ go run github.com/hashicorp/terraform-plugin-docs/cmd/tfplugindocs --version
tfplugindocs Version dev

Provider Code

N/A

Expected Behavior

When generating documentation with go run github.com/hashicorp/terraform-plugin-docs/cmd/tfplugindocs generate --provider-dir . --provider-name name --examples-dir examples, then the validate command using go run github.com/hashicorp/terraform-plugin-docs/cmd/tfplugindocs validate --provider-dir . --provider-name name should not report an error.

Actual Behavior

The actual output of the validate command is:

exporting schema from Terraform
compiling provider "name"
using Terraform CLI binary from PATH if available, otherwise downloading latest Terraform CLI binary
running terraform init
getting provider schema
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found documentation files [docs/data-sources/xxx.md docs/data-sources/yyy.md docs/index.md docs/resources/xxx.md docs/resources/yyy.md docs/resources/zzz.md]
running mixed directories check
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found directory: docs/data-sources
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found directory: docs/data-sources
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found directory: docs
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found directory: docs/resources
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found directory: docs/resources
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found directory: docs/resources
detected static docs directory, running checks
running invalid directories check on docs/data-sources
running file checks on docs/data-sources/xxx.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Checking file: /Users/jde/Documents/name-terraform-provider/docs/data-sources/xxx.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] File docs/data-sources/xxx.md size: 516 (limit: 500000)
running file checks on docs/data-sources/yyy.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Checking file: /Users/jde/Documents/name-terraform-provider/docs/data-sources/yyy.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] File docs/data-sources/yyy.md size: 489 (limit: 500000)
running file checks on docs/index.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Checking file: /Users/jde/Documents/name-terraform-provider/docs/index.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] File docs/index.md size: 816 (limit: 500000)
running invalid directories check on docs/resources
running file checks on docs/resources/xxx.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Checking file: /Users/jde/Documents/name-terraform-provider/docs/resources/xxx.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] File docs/resources/xxx.md size: 524 (limit: 500000)
running file checks on docs/resources/zzz.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Checking file: /Users/jde/Documents/name-terraform-provider/docs/resources/zzz.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] File docs/resources/zzz.md size: 615 (limit: 500000)
running file checks on docs/resources/yyy.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Checking file: /Users/jde/Documents/name-terraform-provider/docs/resources/yyy.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] File docs/resources/yyy.md size: 372 (limit: 500000)
running file mismatch check
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found file xxx.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found file yyy.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found file zzz.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found resource xxx
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found resource yyy
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found resource zzz
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found file xxx.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found file yyy.md
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found datasource xxx
2025/02/06 14:56:14 [DEBUG] Found datasource yyy
Error executing command: validation errors found:
docs/index.md: error checking file frontmatter: YAML frontmatter should not contain subcategory

exit status 1

Note that in docs/index.md, the subcategory field is set to "".

Steps to Reproduce

1. tfplugindocs generate --provider-dir . --provider-name name --examples-dir examples
2. tfplugindocs validate --provider-dir . --provider-name name

How much impact is this issue causing?

Medium

Logs

No response

Additional Information

Setting the category to something else than the empty string does not fix the issue 🤷

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[BravoDeltaBD]

+1 Also interested in the proposed fix!

[albertodonato]

+1