Vector terminates with an error if a transform does not have any inputs

[gucki]

A note for the community

No response

Problem

Current behavior: If a transform doesn't have any inputs vector outputs an error and terminates.
Jun 17 11:39:02 example vector[6656]: x Transform "exmaple_output" has no inputs

Expected behavior: If a transform doesn't have any inputs vector outputs a warning only (no error) and does not terminate.

Reasoning:
We have our vector configuration generated automatically. The transform is always created and inputs are added dynamically. It might happen that no inputs are added, but removing the transform snipped from the yaml again is no easily possible. So it'd be great if vector could simply ignore a transform if it has no inputs, instead of treating it as an error.

Configuration

Version

vector 0.53.0 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu 2b51b40 2026-01-27 21:46:39.386326724)

Debug Output

Example Data

No response

Additional Context

No response

References

No response

[gucki]

The same should apply to the handling of wildcard matches:

Jun 17 11:58:41 example1 vector[7863]: x Input "dummy*" for transform "exmaple_output" doesn't match any components.

[gucki]

As a workaround, I created a dummy source which is always added to the problematic transform:

dummy:
include:
- "/dev/null"
type: file

Of course, this is only a workaround and this issue should still be "fixed".