If your GitHub Pages site includes a symbolic link (also known as a symlink) to another file or directory that does not exist within your site's repository, your site will not build.

If your GitHub Pages site fails to build because of an invalid symlink, you'll get an email that looks like this:

Subject: Page build failed

The page build failed with the following error:

The symbolic link `/foo` targets a file which does not exist within your site's repository.

You will only receive an email if outbound email support is enabled on your Enterprise instance. For more information, contact your site administrator.

Troubleshooting invalid symlink errors

If you do not intend the indicated file to be a symlink, or if you do not use the indicated file to build your site, in many cases, you may safely delete it.

If the symlinked file is necessary to build your site, make sure the file or directory it references is in your repository. To include external assets, consider using a third-party package manager such as Bower.