Found a way to avoid maintaining a separate dub file for docs.

Author: schveiguy

.github/workflows/docs.yml

@@ -29,8 +29,6 @@ jobs:
           # run ddox directly instead with the same command line, including
           # our custom macro file
 
-          # need to use the docs recipe file. This includes the required versions
-          cp dub-docs.sdl dub.sdl
           # build original docs, this gets the json file properly set up
           dub build -b ddox
           # remove docs generated without macro file

dub-docs.sdl

@@ -20,3 +20,9 @@ configuration "unittest" {
 	debugVersions "MYSQLN_TESTS"
 	targetType "sourceLibrary"
 }
+
+buildType "ddox" {
+        dflags "-c" "-Df__dummy.html" "-Xfdocs.json"
+        versions "MySQLDocs"
+        buildOptions "syntaxOnly"
+}