---
id: 158745a1-039d-4d34-b51a-1453268693ea
title: 'build never cleans out/: deleted issues/files keep being served'
state: closed
labels:
- correctness
assignees: []
milestone: null
created: 2026-10-27T14:54:17.130244919Z
updated: 2026-10-27T15:36:07.543789502Z
---
`run_build` never cleans the output directory — it only `create_dir_all`s the subdirs it needs. Anything a previous build wrote and the current build no longer produces stays on disk and keeps being served.

Verified:

```
$ hu13 build . -o out                       # issue 2222… exists -> issues/2222….html
$ git rm -r .forge/issues/2222… && hu13 build . -o out
$ ls out/issues/
22222222-2222-4222-8222-222222222222.html    # still there, still served by `serve`/Pages
$ grep -l "secret body" out/issues/*.html
out/issues/22222222-2222-4222-8222-222222222222.html
```

Same for deleted repo files (`raw/`, `files/`), closed/renamed commits, removed wiki pages and releases. `repo.git` is removed explicitly since #54, everything else is not.

Consequences: "delete an issue" and "close/rename a page" do not unpublish; a Pages deploy of a stale `dist/` quietly keeps removed content reachable by URL. For an inbox-adjacent project that is a privacy bug, not just tidiness.

Fix options:
- **clean by default**: remove `out` (or its known subtrees) at the start of `run_build`, with `--no-clean` for incremental debugging. The entrypoint always builds into a fresh `/srv/www`, so this is safe there.
- or build into a temp dir and swap (atomic-ish), which also fixes half-written output when a build fails midway.

Acceptance:
- [ ] deleting an issue/file and rebuilding leaves no page for it in `out`
- [ ] a failed build never leaves a half-updated served tree
- [ ] documented: build cleans or the flag exists