Alertmanager and invalid template configuration

[vojta....@gmail.com]

Hi,

When non-existing <filepath> is specified in the templates section of Alertmanager configuration, Alertmanager still starts. I assume this is due to the fact that globbing is supported and any value (even if it contains no wildcard) is considered a pattern that matches 0 to many values.

I wonder if it would make sense to consider 0 match an error that would allow Alertmanager to fail fast during startup. I understand that for patterns with wildcard this is debatable, but for patterns that do not contain wildcard the existing behaviour seems unjustified and allows configuration error to remain unnoticed. Currently configuration issue such as typo in template filepath only reveals itself when particular alert notifications fails to send due to missing (mis-configured) template.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Vojta