Sphinx

# Builders

These are the built-in Sphinx builders. More builders can be added by extensions.

The builder’s “name” must be given to the -M or -b command-line options of sphinx-build to select 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.

class sphinx.builders.html.StandaloneHTMLBuilder

  This is the standard HTML builder. Its output is a directory with HTML files, complete with style sheets and optionally the reStructuredText sources. There are quite a few configuration values that customize the output of this builder, see the chapter Options for HTML output for details.

  name: str = 'html'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = 'html'

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = ['image/svg+xml', 'image/png', 'image/gif', 'image/jpeg']

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

class sphinx.builders.dirhtml.DirectoryHTMLBuilder

  This is a subclass of the standard HTML builder. Its output is a directory with HTML files, where each file is called `index.html` and placed in a subdirectory named like its page name. For example, the document `markup/rest.rst` will not result in an output file `markup/rest.html`, but `markup/rest/index.html`. When generating links between pages, the `index.html` is omitted, so that the URL would look like `markup/rest/`.

  name: str = 'dirhtml'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = 'html'

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = ['image/svg+xml', 'image/png', 'image/gif', 'image/jpeg']

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

  Added in version 0.6.

class sphinx.builders.singlehtml.SingleFileHTMLBuilder

  This is an HTML builder that combines the whole project in one output file. (Obviously this only works with smaller projects.) The file is named like the root document. No indices will be generated.

  name: str = 'singlehtml'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = 'html'

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = ['image/svg+xml', 'image/png', 'image/gif', 'image/jpeg']

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

  Added in version 1.0.

class sphinxcontrib.htmlhelp.HTMLHelpBuilder

  This builder produces the same output as the standalone HTML builder, but also generates HTML Help support files that allow the Microsoft HTML Help Workshop to compile them into a CHM file.

class sphinxcontrib.qthelp.QtHelpBuilder

  This builder produces the same output as the standalone HTML builder, but also generates Qt help collection support files that allow the Qt collection generator to compile them.

  Changed in version 2.0: Moved to sphinxcontrib.qthelp from sphinx.builders package.

class sphinxcontrib.applehelp.AppleHelpBuilder

  This builder produces an Apple Help Book based on the same output as the standalone HTML builder.

  If the source directory contains any `.lproj` folders, the one corresponding to the selected language will have its contents merged with the generated output. These folders will be ignored by all other documentation types.

  In order to generate a valid help book, this builder requires the command line tool hiutil, which is only available on Mac OS X 10.6 and above. You can disable the indexing step by setting `applehelp_disable_external_tools` to `True`, in which case the output will not be valid until hiutil has been run on all of the `.lproj` folders within the bundle.

  Added in version 1.3.

  Changed in version 2.0: Moved to sphinxcontrib.applehelp from sphinx.builders package.

class sphinxcontrib.devhelp.DevhelpBuilder

  This builder produces the same output as the standalone HTML builder, but also generates GNOME Devhelp support file that allows the GNOME Devhelp reader to view them.

  Changed in version 2.0: Moved to sphinxcontrib.devhelp from sphinx.builders package.

class sphinx.builders.epub3.Epub3Builder

  This builder produces the same output as the standalone HTML builder, but also generates an epub file for ebook readers. See Epub info for details about it. For definition of the epub format, have a look at https://idpf.org/epub or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB. The builder creates EPUB 3 files.

  name: str = 'epub'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = 'html'

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = ['image/svg+xml', 'image/png', 'image/gif', 'image/jpeg']

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

  Added in version 1.4.

  Changed in version 1.5: Since Sphinx 1.5, the epub3 builder is used as the default epub builder.

class sphinx.builders.latex.LaTeXBuilder

  This builder produces LaTeX source files in the output directory. The actual PDF builds happen inside this output directory and need to be triggered in a second step. This can be done via make all-pdf there. To combine the two steps into only one, use `sphinx-build -M` (i.e. `-M latexpdf` not `-b latexpdf`) or make latexpdf at the project root.

  See `latex_documents` and the chapter Options for LaTeX output for available options.

  PDF builds need a sufficiently complete LaTeX installation. The testing is currently (since 5.3.0) done on Ubuntu 22.04LTS, whose LaTeX distribution matches upstream TeXLive 2021 as of 2022/02/04, but PDF builds can be successfully done on much older LaTeX installations.

  At any rate, on Ubuntu for example, following packages must all be present:

  - `texlive-latex-recommended`

  - `texlive-fonts-recommended`

  - `texlive-fonts-extra` (needed for `fontawesome5`, see the 7.4.0 change notice below)

  - `tex-gyre` (if `latex_engine` left to default)

  - `texlive-latex-extra`

  - `latexmk`

  Changed in version 4.0.0: TeX Gyre fonts now required for `'pdflatex'` engine (default).

  Changed in version 7.4.0: LaTeX package `xcolor` is now required (it is part of Ubuntu `texlive-latex-recommended` anyhow). The LaTeX package `fontawesome5` is recommended. See the ‘sphinxsetup’ `iconpackage` key for more.

  Additional packages are needed in some circumstances:

  - `texlive-lang-cyrillic` for Cyrillic (and also then `cm-super` if using the default fonts),

  - `texlive-lang-greek` for Greek (and also then `cm-super` if using the default fonts),

  - `texlive-xetex` if `latex_engine` is `'xelatex'`,

  - `texlive-luatex` if `latex_engine` is `'lualatex'`,

  - `fonts-freefont-otf` if `latex_engine` is either `'xelatex'` or `'lualatex'`.

  Note

  Since 1.6, `make latexpdf` uses on GNU/Linux and macOS latexmk, as it makes sure the needed number of runs is automatically executed. On Windows the PDF builds execute a fix number of LaTeX runs (three, then `makeindex`, then two more).

  One can pass to `latexmk` options via the `LATEXMKOPTS` Makefile variable. For example:

      make latexpdf LATEXMKOPTS="-silent"

  reduces console output to a minimum.

  Also, if `latexmk` is at version 4.52b or higher (January 2017) `LATEXMKOPTS="-xelatex"` speeds up PDF builds via XeLateX in case of numerous graphics inclusions.

  To pass options directly to the `(pdf|xe|lua)latex` binary, use variable `LATEXOPTS`, for example:

      make latexpdf LATEXOPTS="--halt-on-error"

  name: str = 'latex'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = 'latex'

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = ['application/pdf', 'image/png', 'image/jpeg']

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

Note that a direct PDF builder is being provided by rinohtype. The builder’s name is `rinoh`. Refer to the rinohtype manual for details.

class sphinx.builders.text.TextBuilder

  This builder produces a text file for each reStructuredText file. This is almost the same as the reStructuredText source, but with much of the markup stripped for better readability.

  name: str = 'text'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = 'text'

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = []

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

  Added in version 0.4.

class sphinx.builders.manpage.ManualPageBuilder

  This builder produces manual pages in the groff format. You have to specify which documents are to be included in which manual pages via the `man_pages` configuration value.

  name: str = 'man'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = 'man'

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = []

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

  Added in version 1.0.

class sphinx.builders.texinfo.TexinfoBuilder

  This builder produces Texinfo files that can be processed into Info files by the makeinfo program. You have to specify which documents are to be included in which Texinfo files via the `texinfo_documents` configuration value.

  The Info format is the basis of the on-line help system used by GNU Emacs and the terminal-based program info. See Texinfo info for more details. The Texinfo format is the official documentation system used by the GNU project. More information on Texinfo can be found at https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/.

  name: str = 'texinfo'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = 'texinfo'

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = ['image/png', 'image/jpeg', 'image/gif']

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

  Added in version 1.1.

class sphinxcontrib.serializinghtml.SerializingHTMLBuilder

  This builder uses a module that implements the Python serialization API (`pickle`, `simplejson`, `phpserialize`, and others) to dump the generated HTML documentation. The pickle builder is a subclass of it.

  A concrete subclass of this builder serializing to the PHP serialization format could look like this:

      import phpserialize

      class PHPSerializedBuilder(SerializingHTMLBuilder):
          name = 'phpserialized'
          implementation = phpserialize
          out_suffix = '.file.phpdump'
          globalcontext_filename = 'globalcontext.phpdump'
          searchindex_filename = 'searchindex.phpdump'

  implementation

    A module that implements `dump()`, `load()`, `dumps()` and `loads()` functions that conform to the functions with the same names from the pickle module. Known modules implementing this interface are `simplejson`, `phpserialize`, `plistlib`, and others.

  out_suffix

    The suffix for all regular files.

  globalcontext_filename

    The filename for the file that contains the “global context”. This is a dict with some general configuration values such as the name of the project.

  searchindex_filename

    The filename for the search index Sphinx generates.

  See Serialization builder details for details about the output format.

  Added in version 0.5.

class sphinxcontrib.serializinghtml.PickleHTMLBuilder

  This builder produces a directory with pickle files containing mostly HTML fragments and TOC information, for use of a web application (or custom postprocessing tool) that doesn’t use the standard HTML templates.

  See Serialization builder details for details about the output format.

  name: str = 'pickle'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

    The old name `web` still works as well.

  format: str = 'html'

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = ['image/svg+xml', 'image/png', 'image/gif', 'image/jpeg']

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

  The file suffix is `.fpickle`. The global context is called `globalcontext.pickle`, the search index `searchindex.pickle`.

class sphinxcontrib.serializinghtml.JSONHTMLBuilder

  This builder produces a directory with JSON files containing mostly HTML fragments and TOC information, for use of a web application (or custom postprocessing tool) that doesn’t use the standard HTML templates.

  See Serialization builder details for details about the output format.

  name: str = 'json'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = 'html'

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = ['image/svg+xml', 'image/png', 'image/gif', 'image/jpeg']

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

  The file suffix is `.fjson`. The global context is called `globalcontext.json`, the search index `searchindex.json`.

  Added in version 0.5.

class sphinx.builders.gettext.MessageCatalogBuilder

  This builder produces gettext-style message catalogs. Each top-level file or subdirectory grows a single `.pot` catalog template.

  See the documentation on Internationalization for further reference.

  name: str = 'gettext'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = ''

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = []

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

  Added in version 1.1.

class sphinx.builders.changes.ChangesBuilder

  This builder produces an HTML overview of all `versionadded`, `versionchanged`, `deprecated` and `versionremoved` directives for the current `version`. This is useful to generate a changelog file, for example.

  name: str = 'changes'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = ''

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = []

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

class sphinx.builders.dummy.DummyBuilder

  This builder produces no output. The input is only parsed and checked for consistency. This is useful for linting purposes.

  name: str = 'dummy'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = []

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

  Added in version 1.4.

class sphinx.builders.linkcheck.CheckExternalLinksBuilder

  This builder scans all documents for external links, tries to open them with `requests`, and writes an overview which ones are broken and redirected to standard output and to `output.txt` in the output directory.

  name: str = 'linkcheck'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = ''

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = []

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

  Changed in version 1.5: Since Sphinx 1.5, the linkcheck builder uses the requests module.

  Changed in version 3.4: The linkcheck builder retries links when servers apply rate limits.

class sphinx.builders.xml.XMLBuilder

  This builder produces Docutils-native XML files. The output can be transformed with standard XML tools such as XSLT processors into arbitrary final forms.

  name: str = 'xml'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = 'xml'

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = []

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

  Added in version 1.2.

class sphinx.builders.xml.PseudoXMLBuilder

  This builder is used for debugging the Sphinx/Docutils “Reader to Transform to Writer” pipeline. It produces compact pretty-printed “pseudo-XML”, files where nesting is indicated by indentation (no end-tags). External attributes for all elements are output, and internal attributes for any leftover “pending” elements are also given.

  name: str = 'pseudoxml'

    The builder’s name. This is the value used to select builders on the command line.

  format: str = 'pseudoxml'

    The builder’s output format, or ‘’ if no document output is produced. This is commonly the file extension, e.g. “html”, though any string value is accepted. The builder’s format string can be used by various components such as `SphinxPostTransform` or extensions to determine their compatibility with the builder.

  supported_image_types: list[str] = []

    The list of MIME types of image formats supported by the builder. Image files are searched in the order in which they appear here.

  Added in version 1.2.

Built-in Sphinx extensions that offer more builders are:

- `doctest`

- `coverage`

## Serialization builder details

All serialization builders outputs one file per source file and a few special files. They also copy the reStructuredText source files to the `_sources` directory under the output directory.

The `PickleHTMLBuilder` is a builtin subclass that implements the pickle serialization interface.

The files per source file have the extensions of `out_suffix`, and are arranged in directories just as the source files are. They unserialize to a dictionary (or dictionary like structure) with these keys:

`body`

  The HTML “body” (that is, the HTML rendering of the source file), as rendered by the HTML translator.

`title`

  The title of the document, as HTML (may contain markup).

`toc`

  The table of contents for the file, rendered as an HTML `<ul>`.

`display_toc`

  A boolean that is `True` if the `toc` contains more than one entry.

`current_page_name`

  The document name of the current file.

`parents`, `prev` and `next`

  Information about related chapters in the TOC tree. Each relation is a dictionary with the keys `link` (HREF for the relation) and `title` (title of the related document, as HTML). `parents` is a list of relations, while `prev` and `next` are a single relation.

`sourcename`

  The name of the source file under `_sources`.

The special files are located in the root output directory. They are:

`SerializingHTMLBuilder.globalcontext_filename`

  A pickled dict with these keys:

  `project`, `copyright`, `release`, `version`

    The same values as given in the configuration file.

  `style`

    `html_style`.

  `last_updated`

    Date of last build.

  `builder`

    Name of the used builder, in the case of pickles this is always `'pickle'`.

  `titles`

    A dictionary of all documents’ titles, as HTML strings.

`SerializingHTMLBuilder.searchindex_filename`

  An index that can be used for searching the documentation. It is a pickled list with these entries:

  - A list of indexed docnames.

  - A list of document titles, as HTML strings, in the same order as the first list.

  - A dict mapping word roots (processed by an English-language stemmer) to a list of integers, which are indices into the first list.

`environment.pickle`

  The build environment. This is always a pickle file, independent of the builder and a copy of the environment that was used when the builder was started.

  Todo

  Document common members.

  Unlike the other pickle files this pickle file requires that the `sphinx` package is available on unpickling.