ADR-0046: One docs build¶

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-09-29 Deciders: Alex Nodeland

Amends ADR-0032, where the site is built, and ADR-0033, when the Docs workflow runs and how its runs queue.

Context¶

The build's steps were written three times, in make docs, CI's Docs job and docs.yml, and it ran in two places: CI's Docs job on every pull request and push, and docs.yml on every push to main, so each push to main built the site twice. make docs left out the changelog, so it built a different site from either workflow. And docs.yml queued every run in one pages concurrency group: if pull requests ran it too, their builds would wait in the same queue as main's deployments, where a waiting run is cancelled by the next one to arrive.

evalr and stackr had the same arrangement, and changed it in evalr's ADR-0013 and stackr's ADR-0014. reflexr follows them, as artifactr does in its ADR-0050, so the family's sites are built the same way.

Decision¶

• make docs is the build: it regenerates the changelog (make changelog), builds the site in strict mode, and checks its lists.
• docs.yml runs make docs on every pull request, on every push to main and by hand, in a job named Docs, as CI's was, and deploys only from main. CI's Docs job is removed.
• Each branch's runs queue on their own. The concurrency group is the ref's: runs on main wait their turn, so an older commit never deploys after a newer one, and a newer run on a pull request cancels the older one.

Options considered¶

Option A: One build, in docs.yml (chosen)¶

Pros: the site built locally, on a pull request and on main is built the same way, and each push to main builds it once. Cons: make docs rewrites CHANGELOG.md in the working tree.

Option B: Keep both jobs¶

Pros: no change. Cons: the copies can drift, and every push to main builds the site twice.

Trade-off analysis¶

One workflow that builds on pull requests and deploys from main checks exactly what will be published, and matches evalr's and stackr's. A concurrency group per ref keeps pull requests out of main's queue, so their builds never hold up or take the place of a deployment.

Consequences¶

• Easier: one build to change, and the same one in every sibling repository.
• Harder: make docs leaves a regenerated CHANGELOG.md behind; it is committed only before a release, by make changelog.

Action items¶

1. Build the site once, with make docs, in docs.yml, deploy from main one run at a time, and remove CI's Docs job.