index.rst

Builders

.. module:: sphinx.builders
   :synopsis: Available built-in builder classes.

These are the built-in Sphinx builders. More builders can be added by :doc:`extensions </usage/extensions/index>`.

The builder's "name" must be given to the -b command-line option of :program:`sphinx-build` to select a builder.

.. module:: sphinx.builders.html

This is the standard HTML builder. Its output is a directory with HTML files, complete with style sheets and optionally the reST sources. There are quite a few configuration values that customize the output of this builder, see the chapter :ref:`html-options` for details.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

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/.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. versionadded:: 0.6

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 master document. No indices will be generated.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. versionadded:: 1.0

.. module:: sphinx.builders.htmlhelp

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.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. module:: sphinx.builders.qthelp

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.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. module:: sphinx.builders.applehelp

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 :program:`hiutil`, which is only available on Mac OS X 10.6 and above. You can disable the indexing step by setting :confval:`applehelp_disable_external_tools` to True, in which case the output will not be valid until :program:`hiutil` has been run on all of the .lproj folders within the bundle.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. versionadded:: 1.3

.. module:: sphinx.builders.devhelp

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.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. module:: sphinx.builders.epub3

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

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. versionadded:: 1.4

.. versionchanged:: 1.5

   Since Sphinx-1.5, the epub3 builder is used for the default builder of
   epub.

.. module:: sphinx.builders.latex

This builder produces a bunch of LaTeX files in the output directory. You have to specify which documents are to be included in which LaTeX files via the :confval:`latex_documents` configuration value. There are a few configuration values that customize the output of this builder, see the chapter :ref:`latex-options` for details.

The produced LaTeX file uses several LaTeX packages that may not be present in a "minimal" TeX distribution installation. For example, on Ubuntu, the following packages need to be installed for successful PDF builds:

• texlive-latex-recommended
• texlive-fonts-recommended
• texlive-latex-extra
• texlive-fonts-extra, texlive-lang-greek (if needed to support Greek or Cyrillic letters in non-cyrillic document)
• latexmk (for make latexpdf on GNU/Linux and MacOS X)

• texlive-luatex, texlive-xetex, texlive-fonts-extra

  (if :confval:`latex_engine` is set to 'xelatex' or 'lualatex')

The testing of Sphinx LaTeX is done on Ubuntu xenial with the above mentioned packages, which are from a TeXLive 2015 snapshot dated March 2016.

.. versionchanged:: 1.6
   Formerly, testing had been done on Ubuntu precise (TeXLive 2009).

.. versionchanged:: 2.0
   Formerly, testing had been done on Ubuntu trusty (TeXLive 2013).

Note

Since 1.6, make latexpdf uses latexmk (not on Windows). This makes sure the needed number of runs is automatically executed to get the cross-references, bookmarks, indices, and tables of contents right.

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 version is 4.52b or higher (Jan 17) LATEXMKOPTS="-xelatex" will speed up PDF builds via XeLateX in case of numerous graphics inclusions.

make latexpdf LATEXMKOPTS="-xelatex"

To pass options directly to the (pdf|xe|lua)latex executable, use variable LATEXOPTS.

make latexpdf LATEXOPTS="--interaction=nonstopmode"

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

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

.. module:: sphinx.builders.text

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

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. versionadded:: 0.4

.. module:: sphinx.builders.manpage

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 :confval:`man_pages` configuration value.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. versionadded:: 1.0

.. module:: sphinx.builders.texinfo

This builder produces Texinfo files that can be processed into Info files by the :program:`makeinfo` program. You have to specify which documents are to be included in which Texinfo files via the :confval:`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 :program:`info`. See :ref:`texinfo-faq` 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/.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. versionadded:: 1.1

.. currentmodule:: sphinx.builders.html

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'

.. attribute:: 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.

.. attribute:: out_suffix

   The suffix for all regular files.

.. attribute:: 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.

.. attribute:: searchindex_filename

   The filename for the search index Sphinx generates.

See :ref:`serialization-details` for details about the output format.

.. versionadded:: 0.5

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 :ref:`serialization-details` for details about the output format.

.. autoattribute:: name

   The old name ``web`` still works as well.

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

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

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 :ref:`serialization-details` for details about the output format.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

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

.. versionadded:: 0.5

.. module:: sphinx.builders.gettext

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

See the documentation on :ref:`intl` for further reference.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. versionadded:: 1.1

.. module:: sphinx.builders.changes

This builder produces an HTML overview of all :rst:dir:`versionadded`, :rst:dir:`versionchanged` and :rst:dir:`deprecated` directives for the current :confval:`version`. This is useful to generate a ChangeLog file, for example.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. module:: sphinx.builders.dummy

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

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. versionadded:: 1.4

.. module:: sphinx.builders.linkcheck

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 :file:`output.txt` in the output directory.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. versionchanged:: 1.5

   Since Sphinx-1.5, the linkcheck builder comes to use requests module.

.. module:: sphinx.builders.xml

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

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. versionadded:: 1.2

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.

.. autoattribute:: name

.. autoattribute:: format

.. autoattribute:: supported_image_types

.. versionadded:: 1.2

Built-in Sphinx extensions that offer more builders are:

• :mod:`~sphinx.ext.doctest`
• :mod:`~sphinx.ext.coverage`

Serialization builder details

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

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

The files per source file have the extensions of :attr:`~.SerializingHTMLBuilder.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:

:attr:`.SerializingHTMLBuilder.globalcontext_filename`

A pickled dict with these keys:

project, copyright, release, version

The same values as given in the configuration file.

style

:confval:`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.

:attr:`.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.