The Documentation build process uses the make tool to run the various commands and steps required. We use make because we can specify different targets and the individual steps, and specify the required files and elements which trigger additional steps to build required documents.

By using make we can also automatically rebuild different components of the documentation based on whether the files have changed between the target output and the dependent files that were used to build that target.

The build system also means that you can build any documentation format by using a single command. For example, this guide is located within the mysqldoc-guide directory in the mysqldoc tree.