The documentation is stating to purge the .tiles folder that does not exist.
This folder thus cannot be purged, and more seriously, the systemd freemap-mapnik cannot run due to this lack.
Manually creating it solves this problem.
I guess that this folder has been removed from the git repository to prevent pushing it, and git does not push empty folders.
This can be solved by creating an almost empty .tiles folder and fill it with a void .placeholder zero-weight text file.
The documentation is stating to purge the .tiles folder that does not exist. This folder thus cannot be purged, and more seriously, the systemd freemap-mapnik cannot run due to this lack.
Manually creating it solves this problem.
I guess that this folder has been removed from the git repository to prevent pushing it, and git does not push empty folders. This can be solved by creating an almost empty .tiles folder and fill it with a void .placeholder zero-weight text file.
I'm also up for a PR.