Local deploy failure for functions: Cannot understand what targets to deploy

[REQUIRED] Environment info

firebase-tools: : 8.4.2

Platform: : Windows 10

[REQUIRED] Test case

firebase serve --only functions Result: Cannot understand what targets to deploy. Check that you specified valid targets if you used the --only or --except flag. Otherwise, check your firebase.json to ensure that your project is initialized for the desired features.

[REQUIRED] Steps to reproduce

Initialize a firebase project using the command firebase init and then select all and select javascript and yes for the options. After the initialization is completed and npm install is done then do firebase serve --only hosting,functions this will fail but firebase serve --only hosting working and on deploying the project with firebase deploy the hosted url for the function returns Error: Forbidden Your client does not have permission to get URL /app/timestamp from this server.

[REQUIRED] Expected behavior

function should return the result or else a valid error should be returned.

[REQUIRED] Actual behavior

function serve is not working Error: Cannot understand what targets to deploy. Check that you specified valid targets if you used the --only or --except flag. Otherwise, check your firebase.json to ensure that your project is initialized for the desired features.

Attachment: firebase.json

[samtstern]

Fixed in https://github.com/firebase/firebase-tools/pull/2369

[samtstern]

@MisterSingh I’ll send a PR to improve this error message.