output dir error

[jbaron]

When I try to run typeof on OSX I get the following error:

Error: The output directory "/Users/peter/Development/cats/api_doc" exists but does not seem to be a documentation generated by TypeDoc.
Make sure this is the right target directory, delete the folder and rerun TypeDoc.
Documentation generated at /Users/peter/Development/cats/api_doc

The directory stays empty and I tried removing the directory before running typed, but made no difference. I used the following command:

    ./node_modules/.bin/typedoc --target es5 --out api_doc/ src/

[sebastian-lenz]

Hi jbaron. TypeDoc generates a lot of files and directories at the output directory. To prevent accidentally polluting non output directories with documentation files, I've included a little security check that ensures that the output directory either does not exist or that the output directory contains a previously created documentation (by simply looking for some well known files like "index.html" and "assets/css/main.css").

I'm using both Windows and OS X to develop TypeDoc and till know didn't had this problem on OS X. Are you sure you have the correct access rights at the location you are trying to generate the documentation at? After deleting the output directory and running TypeDoc for the first time the output directory is created but stays empty? What file permissions are set on the directory at this time?

[jbaron]

Turned out to be an issue in the build script that cleaned up the directory async and called typedoc before the directory was really gone. Did it manually and now it generates the API doc (just some warning about unknown language "shell").

Have to say looks great and even notice it picks up the README.md file as the landing page, very nice indeed!

[PanayotCankov]

I want to create a "github.io" API ref page that is added as a submodule in my main repo. The main repo has grunt script generating the api ref. The problem is that I hit this issue. I clean all but the .git files from the submodule before running the typedoc. Is it possible to add a switch to disable this error? Ofc. I can rearrange thing to make it work.

[sebastian-lenz]

Hi Panayot, please see issue #132 describing the same issue. Next version should contain the command line switch --disableOutputCheck that allows you to bypass the cleaning of the output directory.

[PanayotCankov]

That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks! 😍