canonical / canonical/sphinx-stack

build: `clean-doc` target assumes Git

Open
#506 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
enhancement
Dominant language
No language data
Stars
37
Forks
77
Avg merge
8d 13h
Merged PRs (30d)
5

Description

## Situation

The `clean-doc` target in the build assumes the system has access to Git:
https://github.com/canonical/sphinx-docs-starter-pack/blob/daed26d13711659d12cb9ba14f9e3923e3bd0b85/docs/Makefile#L100

While it's exceptionally rare that the host runtime won't have Git, we've experienced this in a project at Canonical. There are stable, POSIX-compliant ways to clean files.

## Request

Add a check like `which git`, and if not present, clean the doc files another way.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Inspect docs/Makefile at the linked clean-doc target, first checking how it currently relies on Git. Test the target in an environment without Git and compare its behavior with a POSIX-compliant cleanup approach. Done means documentation files are cleaned both when Git is available and when it is not.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
git
Domain
build-system
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
52/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.