dartdoc should not delete dotfiles

[DartBot]

This issue was originally filed by sammcca...@google.com

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Currently dartdoc wipes out the contents of the target directory.
This kills the git repo :-(

[anders-sandholm]

Added Area-DartDoc, Triaged labels.

[dgrove]

Set owner to amouravski@google.com.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by amouravski@google.com

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justinfagnani, how are you handling this in your build stuff?

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cc @justinfagnani.
Added Accepted label.

[justinfagnani]

I'm writing everything to an output directory that is completely owned by the buildtool, or to two dotfiles, that are all supposed to be excluded in .gitignore.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by amouravski@google.com

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sammccall: can you give me more information on exactly what your directory structure looks like?

You can set the output directory for dartdoc with --out

By default, dartdoc puts the generated docs into $CWD/docs/ and in doing so, wipes out the docs folder.

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Added NeedsInfo label.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by sammcca...@google.com

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This bug may be obsolete, as it predates the new pub directory structure etc.

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Two git repositories, 'code' and 'docs'. Checked out side-by-side, with 'docs' emptied out (the intention to regenerate docs then commit):
code/
     .git/
     foo.dart
     bar.dart
docs/
     .git/

dartdoc reads files from code/ and writes to docs/

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by amouravski@google.com

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How about this:
I'll still delete everything in the --out folder (default docs/) but I'll save anything that begins with a period '.'

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Added Accepted label.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by sammcca...@google.com

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That'd solve this issue for sure.

[selkhateeb]

I had a similar issue where dartdoc wiped out the content of my hand written documentations, which were in a directory called 'docs', without me knowing (first time dartdoc user).

I would recommend to use an 'ugly' name for the default target directory (Issue #5449).

Another idea is to have a special 'dartdoc.timestamp', or similar, file that tells dartdoc this is really a dartdoc generated folder. If that file is not present simply refuse to run with an appropriate error message.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by amouravski@google.com

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Removed the owner.
Added Triaged label.

[alan-knight]

Added this to the Later milestone.
Removed Area-DartDoc label.
Added Area-DartDocNext, Library-Docgen labels.

[anders-sandholm]

Removed Area-DartDocNext label.
Added Area-DartDoc label.

[anders-sandholm]

Removed Library-Docgen label.

[kevmoo]

Added Pkg-DartDoc label.

[kevmoo]

Removed Area-DartDoc label.
Added Area-Pkg label.