DOC: Validate versions.json before building docs #61573

Author: iabhi4

web/pandas/versions.json

@@ -49,5 +49,5 @@
         "name": "1.0",
         "version": "1.0",
         "url": "https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/1.0/"
-    }
+    },
 ]

web/pandas_web.py

@@ -441,6 +441,11 @@ def main(
     For ``.md`` and ``.html`` files, render them with the context
     before copying them. ``.md`` files are transformed to HTML.
     """
+    # Sanity check: validate that versions.json is valid JSON
+    versions_path = os.path.join(source_path, "versions.json")
+    with open(versions_path, encoding="utf-8") as f:
+        json.load(f)
+
     config_fname = os.path.join(source_path, "config.yml")
 
     shutil.rmtree(target_path, ignore_errors=True)