- Home
- Get it
- Docs
- Extend/Develop

# Invocation of sphinx-quickstart

The sphinx-quickstart script generates a Sphinx documentation set. It is called like this:

>     $ sphinx-quickstart [options] [projectdir]

where projectdir is the Sphinx documentation set directory in which you want to place. If you omit projectdir, files are generated into current directory by default.

The sphinx-quickstart script has several options:

`-q````,` `--quiet```

  Quiet mode that will skips interactive wizard to specify options. This option requires `-p`, `-a` and `-v` options.

`-h````,` `--help````,` `--version```

  Display usage summary or Sphinx version.

## Structure options

`--sep```

  If specified, separate source and build directories.

`--dot``=DOT`

  Inside the root directory, two more directories will be created; “_templates” for custom HTML templates and “_static” for custom stylesheets and other static files. You can enter another prefix (such as ”.”) to replace the underscore.

## Project basic options

`-p` `PROJECT``,` `--project``=PROJECT`

  Project name will be set. (see `project`).

`-a` `AUTHOR``,` `--author``=AUTHOR`

  Author names. (see `copyright`).

`-v` `VERSION`

  Version of project. (see `version`).

`-r` `RELEASE``,` `--release``=RELEASE`

  Release of project. (see `release`).

`-l` `LANGUAGE``,` `--language``=LANGUAGE`

  Document language. (see `language`).

`--suffix``=SUFFIX`

  Source file suffix. (see `source_suffix`).

`--master``=MASTER`

  Master document name. (see `master_doc`).

`--epub```

  Use epub.

## Extension options

`--ext-autodoc```

  Enable `sphinx.ext.autodoc` extension.

`--ext-doctest```

  Enable `sphinx.ext.doctest` extension.

`--ext-intersphinx```

  Enable `sphinx.ext.intersphinx` extension.

`--ext-todo```

  Enable `sphinx.ext.todo` extension.

`--ext-coverage```

  Enable `sphinx.ext.coverage` extension.

`--ext-imgmath```

  Enable `sphinx.ext.imgmath` extension.

`--ext-mathjax```

  Enable `sphinx.ext.mathjax` extension.

`--ext-ifconfig```

  Enable `sphinx.ext.ifconfig` extension.

`--ext-viewcode```

  Enable `sphinx.ext.viewcode` extension.

## Makefile and Batchfile creation options

`--use-make-mode````,` `--no-use-make-mode```

  Makefile/make.bat uses (or not use) make-mode. Default is not use.

`--makefile````,` `--no-makefile```

  Create (or not create) makefile.

`--batchfile````,` `--no-batchfile```

  Create (or not create) batchfile

New in version 1.3: Add various options for sphinx-quickstart invocation.

# Invocation of sphinx-build

The sphinx-build script builds a Sphinx documentation set. It is called like this:

    $ sphinx-build [options] sourcedir builddir [filenames]

where sourcedir is the source directory, and builddir is the directory in which you want to place the built documentation. Most of the time, you don’t need to specify any filenames.

The sphinx-build script has several options:

`-b` `buildername`

  The most important option: it selects a builder. The most common builders are:

  html
    Build HTML pages. This is the default builder.
  dirhtml
    Build HTML pages, but with a single directory per document. Makes for prettier URLs (no `.html`) if served from a webserver.
  singlehtml
    Build a single HTML with the whole content.
  htmlhelp, qthelp, devhelp, epub
    Build HTML files with additional information for building a documentation collection in one of these formats.
  applehelp
    Build an Apple Help Book. Requires hiutil and codesign, which are not Open Source and presently only available on Mac OS X 10.6 and higher.
  latex
    Build LaTeX sources that can be compiled to a PDF document using pdflatex.
  man
    Build manual pages in groff format for UNIX systems.
  texinfo
    Build Texinfo files that can be processed into Info files using makeinfo.
  text
    Build plain text files.
  gettext
    Build gettext-style message catalogs (`.pot` files).
  doctest
    Run all doctests in the documentation, if the `doctest` extension is enabled.
  linkcheck
    Check the integrity of all external links.
  xml
    Build Docutils-native XML files.
  pseudoxml
    Build compact pretty-printed “pseudo-XML” files displaying the internal structure of the intermediate document trees.

  See Available builders for a list of all builders shipped with Sphinx. Extensions can add their own builders.

`-a```

  If given, always write all output files. The default is to only write output files for new and changed source files. (This may not apply to all builders.)

`-E```

  Don’t use a saved environment (the structure caching all cross-references), but rebuild it completely. The default is to only read and parse source files that are new or have changed since the last run.

`-t` `tag`

  Define the tag tag. This is relevant for `only` directives that only include their content if this tag is set.

  New in version 0.6.

`-d` `path`

  Since Sphinx has to read and parse all source files before it can write an output file, the parsed source files are cached as “doctree pickles”. Normally, these files are put in a directory called `.doctrees` under the build directory; with this option you can select a different cache directory (the doctrees can be shared between all builders).

`-j` `N`

  Distribute the build over N processes in parallel, to make building on multiprocessor machines more effective. Note that not all parts and not all builders of Sphinx can be parallelized.

  New in version 1.2: This option should be considered experimental.

`-c` `path`

  Don’t look for the `conf.py` in the source directory, but use the given configuration directory instead. Note that various other files and paths given by configuration values are expected to be relative to the configuration directory, so they will have to be present at this location too.

  New in version 0.3.

`-C```

  Don’t look for a configuration file; only take options via the `-D` option.

  New in version 0.5.

`-D` `setting=value`

  Override a configuration value set in the `conf.py` file. The value must be a number, string, list or dictionary value.

  For lists, you can separate elements with a comma like this: `-D html_theme_path=path1,path2`.

  For dictionary values, supply the setting name and key like this: `-D latex_elements.docclass=scrartcl`.

  For boolean values, use `0` or `1` as the value.

  Changed in version 0.6: The value can now be a dictionary value.

  Changed in version 1.3: The value can now also be a list value.

`-A` `name=value`

  Make the name assigned to value in the HTML templates.

  New in version 0.5.

`-n```

  Run in nit-picky mode. Currently, this generates warnings for all missing references. See the config value `nitpick_ignore` for a way to exclude some references as “known missing”.

`-N```

  Do not emit colored output.

`-v```

  Increase verbosity (loglevel). This option can be given up to three times to get more debug logging output. It implies `-T`.

  New in version 1.2.

`-q```

  Do not output anything on standard output, only write warnings and errors to standard error.

`-Q```

  Do not output anything on standard output, also suppress warnings. Only errors are written to standard error.

`-w` `file`

  Write warnings (and errors) to the given file, in addition to standard error.

`-W```

  Turn warnings into errors. This means that the build stops at the first warning and `sphinx-build` exits with exit status 1.

`-T```

  Display the full traceback when an unhandled exception occurs. Otherwise, only a summary is displayed and the traceback information is saved to a file for further analysis.

  New in version 1.2.

`-P```

  (Useful for debugging only.) Run the Python debugger, `pdb`, if an unhandled exception occurs while building.

`-h````,` `--help````,` `--version```

  Display usage summary or Sphinx version.

  New in version 1.2.

You can also give one or more filenames on the command line after the source and build directories. Sphinx will then try to build only these output files (and their dependencies).

## Makefile options

The `Makefile` and `make.bat` files created by sphinx-quickstart usually run sphinx-build only with the `-b` and `-d` options. However, they support the following variables to customize behavior:

`PAPER`

  The value for `latex_paper_size`.

`SPHINXBUILD`

  The command to use instead of `sphinx-build`.

`BUILDDIR`

  The build directory to use instead of the one chosen in sphinx-quickstart.

`SPHINXOPTS`

  Additional options for sphinx-build.

# Invocation of sphinx-apidoc

The sphinx-apidoc generates completely automatic API documentation for a Python package. It is called like this:

    $ sphinx-apidoc [options] -o outputdir packagedir [pathnames]

where packagedir is the path to the package to document, and outputdir is the directory where the generated sources are placed. Any pathnames given are paths to be excluded ignored during generation.

Warning

`sphinx-apidoc` generates reST files that use `sphinx.ext.autodoc` to document all found modules. If any modules have side effects on import, these will be executed by `autodoc` when `sphinx-build` is run.

If you document scripts (as opposed to library modules), make sure their main routine is protected by a `if __name__ == '__main__'` condition.

The sphinx-apidoc script has several options:

`-o` `outputdir`

  Gives the directory in which to place the generated output.

`-f````,` `--force```

  Normally, sphinx-apidoc does not overwrite any files. Use this option to force the overwrite of all files that it generates.

`-n````,` `--dry-run```

  With this option given, no files will be written at all.

`-s` `suffix`

  This option selects the file name suffix of output files. By default, this is `rst`.

`-d` `maxdepth`

  This sets the maximum depth of the table of contents, if one is generated.

`-l````,` `--follow-links```

  This option makes sphinx-apidoc follow symbolic links when recursing the filesystem to discover packages and modules. You may need it if you want to generate documentation from a source directory managed by collective.recipe.omelette. By default, symbolic links are skipped.

  New in version 1.2.

`-T````,` `--no-toc```

  This prevents the generation of a table-of-contents file `modules.rst`. This has no effect when `--full` is given.

`-F````,` `--full```

  This option makes sphinx-apidoc create a full Sphinx project, using the same mechanism as sphinx-quickstart. Most configuration values are set to default values, but you can influence the most important ones using the following options.

`-M```

  This option makes sphinx-apidoc put module documentation before submodule documentation.

`-H` `project`

  Sets the project name to put in generated files (see `project`).

`-A` `author`

  Sets the author name(s) to put in generated files (see `copyright`).

`-V` `version`

  Sets the project version to put in generated files (see `version`).

`-R` `release`

  Sets the project release to put in generated files (see `release`).