Troubleshooting

December 19, 2022 2 min read

The list of known issues and corresponding solutions.

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POSTCSS CLI

1Error: Error building site: POSTCSS: failed to transform "hb/scss/index.css" (text/css). Check your PostCSS installation.

The error above will appear if there isn’t POSTCSS CLI installed on your environment.

1npm i postcss-cli

1sudo npm i -g postcss-cli

RTLCSS

1POSTCSS: failed to transform "hb/scss/index.rtl.css" (text/css): Plugin Error: Cannot find package 'rtlcss' imported from /usr/lib/node_modules/postcss-cli/index.js'

The error above will be reached if there isn’t RTLCSS installed on your machine.

1npm i rtlcss

1sudo npm i -g rtlcss

PurgeCSS Configuration

1Error: Error building site: POSTCSS: failed to transform "hb/scss/index.css" (text/css): Error: Failed to parse runtime PurgeCSS config: Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open './public/.build/purgecss.json'.
2Please enable the "--renderToDisk" if you are using Hugo server.

It happens on the case of using Hugo server on production mode without the --renderToDisk and --disableFastRender flags.

1hugo server \
2  -e production \
3  --renderToDisk \
4  --disableFastRender \
5  -p 1313 \
6  -b http://localhost:1313

Hugo Stats File

1Error: Error building site: POSTCSS: failed to transform "hb/scss/index.css" (text/css): /home/hbstack/Projects/hbstack/hb/purgecss.config.js:5
2        throw new Error('Hugo stats file not found, please enable the "build.writeStats".')
3        ^
4Error: Hugo stats file not found, please enable the "build.writeStats".

hugo.toml

1[build]
2  writeStats = true

hugo.yaml

1build:
2  writeStats: true

hugo.json

1{
2   "build": {
3      "writeStats": true
4   }
5}

Autoprefixer

1Error: Error building site: POSTCSS: failed to transform "hb/scss/index.css" (text/css): Error: Cannot find module '/usr/lib/node_modules/autoprefixer'

1npm i postcss-cli

1sudo npm i -g postcss-cli

POSTCSS PurgeCSS

1Error: Error building site: POSTCSS: failed to transform "hb/scss/index.css" (text/css): Error: Cannot find module '@fullhuman/postcss-purgecss'

1npm i @fullhuman/postcss-purgecss

1sudo npm i -g @fullhuman/postcss-purgecss

Extremely Inefficient Build Performance

There are a number of factors that slow down site builds, here’s a list of some common ones.

Inefficient disk IO performance, e.g external disks.
Windows Defender or others antivirus software’s real-time protection.
The publish folder are being watching by sync softwares, such as OneDrive, NutStore.

We recommend building your sites on high performance disk, such as SSD. Building on Linux system is also recommended if possible, since it’s typically faster than other OSs like Windows.