Confusing error message

[jennybc]

I just inherited gmailr and found that its site hasn't been building for a while.

The problem was an empty item:

r-lib/gmailr@d5d90f3#diff-f5f791eb2285a738ec729c44088e49a60ddf355eb479fb1fb5df7fcea4fea2e8L75

but the pkgdown error message is a bit misleading. I figure the error with previous pkgdown isn't that interesting, but you can see it in GHA logs.

With current dev pkgdown, the error is

-- Building function reference -------------------------------------------------
Error : Item 1 in section 8 in reference in '_pkgdown.yml' must be a character.
ℹ You might need to add '' around e.g. - 'N' or - 'off'.
Error: callr subprocess failed: Item 1 in section 8 in reference in '_pkgdown.yml' must be a character.
ℹ You might need to add '' around e.g. - 'N' or - 'off'.

This bit was accurate: section 8 in reference in '_pkgdown.yml'.

But this was wrong: Item 1 in ... (or else maybe I misunderstand what Item 1 refers to).

And this hints feels very specific, but it's also sort of a misdiagnosis:

ℹ You might need to add '' around e.g. - 'N' or - 'off'.`