Unhelpful error message with malformed packages.yml

[jthandy]

Describe the bug

MacBook-Pro:analytics tristan$ cat packages.yml
packages:
  - package: fishtown-analytics/stripe
    revision: 0.3.1

I had recently switched from a git reference to this package to a hub reference, and forgot that I needed to change from revision to version. This is the error message I received, which made it significantly more challenging to debug:

MacBook-Pro:analytics tristan$ dbt clean && dbt deps
Running with dbt=0.15.0
Encountered an error while reading the project:
  ERROR: Runtime Error
  Invalid package config: at path []: 'local' is a required property

Expected behavior

I would expect an error message like:

Required parameter version not supplied.

...or something similar.

The output of dbt --version:

MacBook-Pro:analytics tristan$ dbt --version
installed version: 0.15.0
   latest version: 0.15.0

Up to date!

[sonac]

well local is actually also valid error, since it could be the case if package is stored locally. I can suggest error msg like packages.yml is malformed, please make sure that it matches https://docs.getdbt.com/docs/package-management#section-how-do-i-add-a-package-to-my-project

[drewbanin]

good idea @sonac - are you interested in submitting a PR for that change? I think it should be a quick fix!