If you create a new operator, and then run operator-sdk generate k8s without first creating any custom resources, as the getting started guide was instructing people to do until operator-framework/getting-started#30 fixed it, you get this less than helpful error message:
$ operator-sdk generate k8s
Running code-generation for custom resource group versions: []
2018/11/12 14:32:03 failed to perform code-generation: (exit status 255)
This could be improved to something more informative so that if people do do this (for example, if they accidentally miss the step that I added to the getting started guide), they have some hope of working out what they did wrong.