I'd like to propose removing the docs/ folder from the Solr binary
distribution and folding its useful content into README.txt instead.

Background: docs/ in the binary distro comes from solr/documentation in
the source repo, and its content is published online for each release
already -- e.g. https://solr.apache.org/docs/10_0_0/ for 10.0.0.

Looking at what's actually in the folder today (10.0.0):

  docs/index.html            -- a single HTML page whose only content is
                                 two links: one to the online docs, one
                                 to docs/changes/Changes.html
  docs/solr.svg               -- logo used by index.html
  docs/changes/Changes.html   -- an HTML-rendered changelog
  docs/changes/*.css          -- stylesheets for the above

None of this is actually documentation -- it's a redirect page plus a
second, redundant copy of the changelog. We already ship CHANGELOG.md at
the top level of the distro, so docs/changes/ is pure duplication in a
different format. And README.txt already has a line pointing at
docs/index.html for "the online version of the Javadoc API documentation
and Tutorial" -- we can just replace that with the direct link and cut
out the middleman page entirely.

Proposal:
- Stop bundling docs/ in the binary distribution.
- Add the online docs link (and the per-release changes link, if
  desired) directly into README.txt's existing "Files included in an
  Apache Solr binary distribution" section.

This shrinks the distro slightly and removes a folder whose entire
purpose is now better served by a couple of README lines.

You can see the current contents for yourself by downloading the 10.0.0
slim distro and looking at docs/:
https://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.lua/solr/solr/10.0.0/solr-10.0.0-slim.tgz

Thoughts?

Somewhat out of scope, but IMO the solr/documentation folder feels weird in
name/scope/purpose.  Maybe renaming to site-docs to better reflect that the
destination/delivery is a website.  I'm not sure if incorporating it into
the solr-site repo makes sense.

~ David Smiley
Apache Lucene/Solr Search Developer
http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwsmiley

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