Re: Important changes in Docwriter

[Nikhil Ramakrishnan]

Hello Werner,

> The last step fails with
>
>   Config file '.../docs/mkdocs.yml' does not exist.
>
> Note that `mkdocs.yml` gets explicitly removed while calling `make
> dist` (see `builds/toplevel.mk`).

`mkdocs serve` requires the file `mkdocs.yml` to generate the site and
start up the server.

> What must I do to get local search capabilities?  This is, I want to
> open the local file
>
>   docs/reference/index.html
>
> in my browser and be able to use the search field.

We had faced a similar issue with local search while initially setting
up mkdocs. Searching the list, I found:

> Firefox comes with a very strict "file uri origin" policy by default. This 
> prevents the local page from accessing the file system to get the required 
> font(s). A workaround is to go to `about:config', filter by fileuri and 
> toggle the preference
>   security.fileuri.strict_origin_policy
> to set it to `false'.

This applies to search too, but is not recommended though, because it
may pose security issues.

If we want search to be usable locally, I suggest that the file
`mkdocs.yml` be included in the distribution, and `mkdocs serve` be
officially documented as a method to serve the site. Of course, this
will require Python 3 and mkdocs to be available in the environment.

Nikhil