fix: remove public directory in clean target

[Bhumikagarggg]

Notes for Reviewers

This PR fixes #

Signed commits

• Yes, I signed my commits.

[github-actions]

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2026-05-18 04:37 UTC

[bri-tong]

Code Review — PR #28: fix: remove public directory in clean target

Summary

This PR adds a make setup (i.e., npm i) step to the clean Makefile target, inserted between hugo --cleanDestinationDir and make site. The change is a single line addition to the Makefile. While the intent appears reasonable, there are correctness and clarity concerns that should be addressed before merging.

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Blocking Issues

1. PR title is misleading — the change does not "remove public directory"

The title says "fix: remove public directory in clean target", but the actual change adds make setup (npm i). The public/ directory cleanup was already handled by hugo --cleanDestinationDir, which existed before this PR. The title should accurately describe what the PR does — e.g., "fix: add npm dependency install to clean target".

2. Incorrect ordering — make setup should run BEFORE hugo --cleanDestinationDir (Makefile, line 41)

hugo --cleanDestinationDir cleans the destination directory and then performs a build. If npm dependencies are required for that Hugo build to succeed (e.g., for PostCSS, Autoprefixer, or Docsy theme assets), they need to be installed before the build, not after it. The current ordering means:

1. hugo --cleanDestinationDir  → cleans + builds (potentially with stale/missing node_modules)
2. make setup                  → installs npm deps (too late for the build above)
3. make site                   → starts dev server

The correct order should be:

clean:
	make setup
	hugo --cleanDestinationDir
	make site

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Non-blocking Suggestions

3. No linked issue

The PR body says "This PR fixes #" with no issue number. If there's a related issue, it should be linked. If not, the template text should be removed.

4. Use $(MAKE) instead of make for recursive calls (pre-existing)

This is not introduced by this PR, but both make setup and make site should use $(MAKE) for portability (e.g., $(MAKE) setup). This ensures the correct make binary is used in recursive invocations.

5. The clean target name is semantically misleading (pre-existing)

Conventionally, make clean removes build artifacts and exits. Here it cleans, rebuilds, and starts a long-running dev server (hugo server). Consider renaming to rebuild or fresh if the intent is a clean-slate rebuild + serve.

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Questions / Clarifications

• What specific problem was encountered that motivated adding make setup to clean? Was it a missing node_modules after cleaning, or something else?
• Was this tested locally to confirm the build succeeds with this ordering?

[saurabhraghuvanshii]

@Bhumikagarggg title is not aligning with changes.