At the moment, when building the documentation, some temporary files are created in the sources directories. When switching branches and compiling the documentation for older releases (for example building a 17.11 documentation, with a master documentation built before) , this can trigger hard to understand build errors like: Sphinx error: master file .../doc/guides/compressdevs/index.rst not found make[1]: *** [.../mk/rte.sdkdoc.mk:110: guides-pdf-compressdevs] Error 2 make: *** [.../mk/rte.sdkroot.mk:116: doc-all] Error 2