In our test builds for Yaydoc, we found that If we set the root as the documentation directory, the build would fail with a very long build log. In the build process, we create some temporary directories such as a virtual environment and the build directory in the root. After some inspection of the build logs, we found out that when the root is itself used as the documentation directory, we were accidently recursively copying the build directory into itself which led to build failure. Together with this, since the virtual environment directory was also being accidently copied to the build directory, we were actually building the documentation of the entire Python standard library on each build.

Once the problem and It’s cause was known, the course of action to be taken was clear. We needed to ensure that any temporary directories which we create as part of the build process was not being copied to the build directory. The following changes were made to achieve that.

• The virtual environment directory was now being created in the HOME directory instead of the root.
• Any other temporary directories which except the main build directory was now deleted before copying.
• To prevent the recursive copying, we used the –exclude parameter of rsync.

rsync --exclude=BUILD_DIR DOCS_DIR/ BUILD_DIR/

After this patch, root can also be used as the documentation directory with Yaydoc. To do so, just set the environment variable DOCPATH as “.”