Run the makedoc script with the -A (or even --bare) flag?

[stertooy]

A bit nitpicky, but perhaps we should run the makedoc.g script with the -A or even the --bare flag? The idea being to catch "hidden" dependencies for this script, e.g. a package that is needed only for a particular example in the documentation? IMO loading such packages (or ensuring they are already loaded) should be done by makedoc.g and not by relying GAP's default list of packages to load.

[fingolfin]

In principle I agree. In practice it will likely reveal a bunch of "problems" that we then need to find. At the same time I am not sure what we really gain?

[stertooy]

Practically, we gain very little indeed. Especially since packages are (usually?) distributed with their documentation pre-compiled, and there's no real reason for users to (re-)run makedoc.g anyway, I think?

It might make it easier to debug the manual if examples suddenly change due to e.g. changes in a dependency... or prevent failures if someone is running a minimal GAP installation and uses PackageManager to install a development version of a package.

Certainly, doing this will create more (temporary) problems than it will solve/prevent, so this is very much a "principle" thing. But perhaps adding an optional input to this action to facilitate using the -A or --bare flags, while obviously keeping the current situation as the standard, could be considered?