Allow empty _metadata.yml

news/changelog-1.7.md

@@ -29,6 +29,7 @@ All changes included in 1.7:
 
 ### `website`
 
+- ([#5600](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/5600)): Allow existing-but-empty `_metadata.yml` file in projects.
 - ([#8238](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/8238)): Listing categories are now sorted case-insensitively.
 - ([#10501](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/10501)): Improve documentation of `repo-actions` option.
 - ([#11701](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/11701)): Wrap HTML emitted by EJS templates in `{=html}` blocks to avoid memory blowup issues with Pandoc's parser.

src/project/project-shared.ts

@@ -329,6 +329,7 @@ export async function directoryMetadataForInputFile(
         file,
         frontMatterSchema,
         errMsg,
+        "{}",
       )) || {}) as Record<string, unknown>;
 
       // resolve format into expected structure
@@ -611,7 +612,7 @@ export async function projectResolveBrand(
         }
         if (typeof brand.dark === "string") {
           dark = await loadRelativeBrand(brand.dark);
-        } else if(brand.dark) {
+        } else if (brand.dark) {
           dark = new Brand(
             brand.dark,
             dirname(fileName),