Last version I tried was 0.121.1, but think change was related to resource tree in 0.123.0. I checked with 0.122 and is not behaving like 0.123.0.
Right now when you using hugo server the site is served locally but in the past, it was served from memory. Right now, this command is building site in public directory.
I never saw previously that this command was responsible for creating this directory. The issue is that all files that are already generated under resources/_gen/images/ are re-generated inside public directory.
I think this shall only happens when building site, not when developing/testing?
There’s a change mentioned in the release notes in that --renderToDisk has been replaced by --renderToMemory. So, the default is now for hugo and hugo server to write the site to disk. If you want hugo server to save to memory, you should use the option --renderToMemory.