How to minimize the number of changes between versions with the new doxygen release?

Question

The subversion repository contains html, latex and human directories that doxygen generates from source code. Even with small changes to the source code, new files with random names are generated, which leads to large changes in the version control system.

Is there any way around this? How can I minimize changes between revisions, including oxygen-based documentation? Alternatively, how can I find which of the gengen-genrated files is no longer in use and should be deleted?

Answer 1

I don’t like answering a question without answering a specific question, but overall it is a bad idea to track doxygen documents in your repository. The same is true for configure scripts created by autoconf.

If you are worried that people cannot generate documents due to the lack of doxygen, it is better to place them in your own repo in your language and language choice.

You can modify build scripts to do this for you, with less effort. In my experience, after working on free / open source for several years, those who really care about documents will be able to generate them, but your mileage may vary.

Eliminate redundant merge conflicts (i.e. Joe has changed the comments AND docs and should now combine both). IMHO justifies externalizing created documents.