[BUG] wash throws JSON error on deploy or validate due to malformed wadm.yaml

[jonobattle]

• Moving this bug here after posting to wash-cli issues.

Describe the bug

When running wash app deploy ./wadm.yaml I received a

Unable to parse manifest: Json(Error("expected value", line: 1, column: 1))

No JSON is involved in my project so I ran the wadm app validate ./wadm.yaml and got:

failed to validate Wadm manifest

Caused by:
    0: failed to parse manifest content in file: ./wadm.yaml
    1: spec.components[0]: unknown field `properties`, expected one of `image`, `application`, `id`, `config`, `secrets` at line 9 column 7

Not a biggie, but the JSON error could send people in the wrong direction.

The error was caused by an empty "properties" object where I had commented out the links.

apiVersion: core.oam.dev/v1beta1
kind: Application
metadata:
  name: workflow
  annotations:
    description: "Workflow project"
spec:
  components:
    - name: workflow
      type: component
      properties:
        # To use the locally compiled code in this folder, use the line below instead after running `wash build`:
        image: file://./build/cardio_workflow.wasm
        # image: ghcr.io/wasmcloud/components/echo-messaging-rust:0.1.0
        id: workflow
        config:
          - name: workflow
        properties:
          #link_workflow_manifest: "bucket-workflow-manifest"
          #link_workflow_lock: "bucket-workflow-lock"
          #link_workflow_instance: "bucket-workflow-instance"

Steps to reproduce

Run wash app deploy ./wadm.yaml when you have an invalid yaml file like above (properties object has child props commented out).

Expected behavior

It would be great to see the output from the "validate" call rather than the JSON error.

Environment

• PopOs
• zsh
• wash v0.41.0
  ├ nats-server v2.10.26
  ├ wadm v0.21.0
  └ wasmcloud v1.7.0

[jonobattle]

Just adding - if you then comment out the properties prop in the config the project will deploy - but when it deploys it won't reconcile and will throw an error about a missing config.

{"timestamp":"2025-05-29T08:57:05.142387Z","level":"ERROR","fields":{"message":"failed to scale component","component_ref":"file:///home/jonathan/Development/Cardio/cardio/cardio-taskmanager/build/cardio_taskmanager.wasm","component_id":"cardiotaskmanager","err":"Unable to fetch requested config\n\nCaused by:\n    Config cardiotaskmanager does not exist"},"target":"wasmcloud_host::wasmbus::ctl"}

So, if you don't have any props in your config (which won't be often for anything production), you also need to comment out/remove the config and the name,