[spec] Ddoc generator issue?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Friday, May 17, 2019 6:56:02 AM MDT Dibyendu Majumdar via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:
> On Friday, 17 May 2019 at 12:17:43 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
> > The error I get is this:
> >
> > .generated/stable_dmd-2.085.0/dmd2/linux/bin64/rdmd
> > --compiler=.generated/stable_dmd-2.085.0/dmd2/linux/bin64/dmd
> > -conf=.generated/stable_dmd-2.085.0/dmd2/linux/bin64/dmd.conf
> > ../tools/contributors.d --format=ddoc "master" >
> > .generated/contributors_list.tmp
> > fatal: ambiguous argument 'master': unknown revision or path
> > not in the working tree.
>
> Okay it seems that I needed to create a local master branch
> tracking origin/master. Because I have set the default branch on
> my fork to some other branch, there was no local master branch
> created.
>
> Still - all I want to do is work on the spec. It is very very
> painful.

The normal workflow is to fork the repo on github then clone your entire
repo locally. You keep your master up-to-date with the upstream master and
create a local branch whenever you want to do work for a PR. Once it's
ready, you push that branch to your github repo and create a PR from that
branch to upstream. Separate branches are used for each PR, and you usually
delete each branch after a PR has been merged. Because that's the normal
workflow that pretty much everyone follows, it's really not surprising if
the Makefiles assume something based on that workflow and don't work
properly if you do something differently. In general though, I have no idea
how you could function without a local copy of master, because you need to
be branching off of master when creating PRs, or you risk working on
outdated versions of the files.

Regardless, the dlang.org repo is probably the worst repo we have, because
is has so many targets, a number of which run tools that not everyone has
(the target that creates the ebook version of the documentation would be a
prime example of that). So, if you're going to run into problems with any of
our repos, it would be that one.

- Jonathaan M Davis