On Thu, Sep 24, 2026 at 05:43:23PM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote: > in my-docs but then deleted before texi2any finished running.) Now let's try > HTML: > > $ texi2any --html test.texi -o my-docs > > This creates a mess: the my-docs directory still contains all of its previous > contents, but contains all the files from the split HTML output as well. > > This suggests that split HTML output doesn't remove stale files from the > output directory, either: the directory listing can end up looking like > this: > > -rw-rw-r-- 1 g g 771 Sep 24 17:16 A-Chapter.html > -rw-rw-r-- 1 g g 771 Sep 24 17:28 B-Chapter.html > -rw-rw-r-- 1 g g 1.2k Sep 24 17:28 index.html > -rw-rw-r-- 1 g g 712 Sep 24 17:28 Test.html > > - where "A chapter" was the name of a removed node from a previous run > of texi2any. > > At the least we should make it a warning. And I think we should seriously > consider whether the output directory should be wiped for split HTML output. > Another option could be warning about stale files in the output directory > for split HTML output.
I do not think that we should, the user may prepopulate with some files that we do not want to mess with. Could be anything really, like a general index for documentation, some images, other outputs formats, HTML files generated from markdown... If the user wants a clean state he/she can just remove the directory before calling texi2any. -- Pat
