Problem

I almost always have problems building my Next.js app locally (which almost always means I’ll have problems deploying it). Sometimes I just need to delete all my /pages/ except my /pages/api/ routes.

Sometimes, though, whatever I do, I just repeatedly hit this error:

> Build error occurred
Error: Export encountered errors on following paths:
...

Confusingly, when I retry building I end up with a different list of error-throwing paths virtually every time.

If you’re bashing your head against the wall trying to figure out why you’re encountering a build error, try this:

Start your local Next.js server using next start or yarn start or npm start (or whatever you use), and then navigate to all of the pages or paths giving you build problems.

Now try building again in another terminal window. In some cases simply building the pages on the fly locally through your development server allows the build to proceed.

Weird, right? (Yes, I know this makes sense to someone.)