DocInit

DocInit is an opiniated, yet flexible documentation generator for your Python projects. It removes the burden of rewriting the same configuration files over and over, and instead favors a simple, non-repetitive declarative style. It uses Sphinx and Sphinx AutoAPI behind the scenes.

Features

• Entirely configurable from your setup.cfg file
• Automatically fills the blanks so you don't have to repeat yourself
• Allows master and sub projects
• Compatible with Read the Docs
• Flexible and extensible

Example

The Timeflux documentation is managed by DocInit.

Install

pip install docinit

Usage

Write your documentation

Or not. If you don't do anything, DocInit will automatically find your packages, generate API documentation, and create an index page (using either your repo's README.rst file or a default paragraph).

You can add your own .rst files in the doc directory, and overwrite the default index.rst. Put your logo and favicon in doc/_static/logo.png and doc/_static/favicon.ico, respectively.

If you need to configure further, do it in the docinit section of your setup.cfg. Refer to the Configuration section for details.

Setup a Sphinx project

The following will take care of initializing everything:

python setup.py docinit

If you don't have a setup.py file, you can instead simply run:

docinit

Don't worry, nothing will be overwritten if a file with the same name already exists. There is no need to re-run this command, even if you modify your setup.cfg. But if you do, nothing bad will happen.

You don't have to commit the generated files. Refer to the Read the Docs section to learn how to setup your project at build time.

Build

cd doc
make html

You can now find your generated documentation in doc/_build/html/.

By default, the make command will return an error (but will still build everything) in case of warning. This allows for easy integration in your CI/CD pipelines.

Configuration

The following options are accepted:

Key	Type
doc_dir	str
name	str
parent_url	str
logo_url	str
favicon_url	str
version	str
release	str
packages	list
author	str
copyright	str
analytics	str
canonical_url	str

There is no required option. If not set, DocInit will try to find an appropriate value elsewhere. If it fails, it will settle on a default value.

doc_dir

This is where your documentation lives.

Default	Lookups
doc	source-dir in the build_sphinx section

name

The name of your project.

Default	Lookups
Project	project in the build_sphinx section name in the metadata section name of the current git repo

parent_url

If you are managing a subproject, this is the URL of the main project. When set, DocInit adds a Back entry in the menu, and configures the intersphinx mapping.

Default	Lookups
None

logo_url

The URL of an image that will be downloaded to doc/_static/logo.png. Useful for subprojects.

Default	Lookups
None

favicon_url

The URL of an image that will be downloaded to doc/_static/favicon.ico. Useful for subprojects.

Default	Lookups
None

version

The semantic version of your package. If it is not explicitly defined, DocInit will use setuptools_scm to fetch it from git tags, or fallback to 0.0.0.

Default	Lookups
From git tags	version in the build_sphinx section version in the metadata section

release

The full version of your package, including VCS status. If it is not explicitly defined, DocInit will use setuptools_scm to fetch it from git tags, or fallback to 0.0.0.

Default	Lookups
From git tags	release in the build_sphinx section

packages

The list of packages for which the API documentation will be generated. If it is not specified, DocInit will discover packages from the root of your project (where setup.cfg is located).

Default	Lookups
find:	packages in the options section

author

The author of the project.

Default	Lookups
Anonymous	author in the metadata section From the first commit in the current git repository

copyright

The copyright for this project. If it is not defined, it will be constructed from the year of the first commit, the current year, and author.

Default	Lookups
Generated	copyright in the build_sphinx section

analytics

Your Google Analytics ID. It should look like UA-XXXXXXX-1.

Default	Lookups
None

canonical_url

If your URL is available through multiple URLs, the canonical url indicates to search engines which one it should index. The URL points to the root path of the documentation and requires a trailing slash.

Default	Lookups
None

Arbitrary options

That is not all: you can pass arbitrary options, and they will be injected in conf.py. For example, setting: autoapi_generate_api_docs = 0 will disable API documentation. Please refer to the official Sphinx and Sphinx AutoAPI documentation for recognized options.

Read the docs

If you decide to not push the files created by DocInit, the easiest way is to install your package before building the docs. You can configure this behavior either in the Advanced settings tab of your dashboard or in your configuration file.

Then you just need to invoke DocInit during the setup process.

This can be achieved in your setup.py:

setup(
    ...
    setup_requires="docinit",
    docinit=True,
    ...
)

Or if you prefer, in your pyproject.toml:

[tool.docinit]

[build-system]
requires = ["setuptools>=42", "wheel", "docinit"]
build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"

Please note: before version 20.1.b1 and since version 20.1.1, pip builds in a temporary directory. Therefore, on Read The Docs you need to install the package with setup.py so the documentation is generated in the current directory.

Alternative build systems

DocInit currently only parses Setuptools setup.cfg files. We plan to add support for other build systems as well, such as Flit and Poetry, which rely on pyproject.toml files.