# Walkthrough: Optimizing Help Documentation Build

This document outlines the optimizations performed to create a professional, lean, and efficient help system for the SecInterp QGIS plugin.

## 1. Help System Slimming

To reduce the size of the built-in help and avoid exposing redundant source code views, the following changes were made:

### Removal of `_modules`
The `sphinx.ext.viewcode` extension was removed from `docs/source/conf.py`. This prevents Sphinx from generating HTML versions of the Python source code, which are unnecessary for the end-user.

### Removal of `_sources`
The `Makefile` target `help-integrate` was updated to delete the `_sources` directory after copying the build results to the `help/` folder. This removes the raw `.rst` and `.md` source files from the final plugin distribution.

## 2. Advanced ZIP Package Optimization

The `zip` target in the `Makefile` was overhauled to exclude non-essential development resources, significantly reducing the uncompressed footprint of the plugin.

### Key Exclusions:
- **Test Suite**: `tests/` and `.pytest_cache/`
- **Example Data**: `examples/`
- **Raw Documentation**: `docs/` (the user only needs the compiled `help/` folder)
- **Developer Tools**: `.agent/`, `.ai-context/`, and internal maintenance logs.
- **Environment & Configs**: `.venv/`, `Makefile`, `ruff.toml`, `.pylintrc`, etc.

## 3. Results and Verification

The build was verified using `make zip`.

| Metric | Before Optimization | After Optimization |
|--------|---------------------|--------------------|
| Uncompressed Size | ~10.7 MB | **~3.1 MB** |
| ZIP File Size | 694 KB (mostly raw samples) | 1.1 MB (rich documentation) |
| Functional Warnings | - | 0 (Clean Build ✅) |

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*Created on 2025-12-21*
