setup.py docs does not work

[Moritz90]

After creating a new project with pyscaffold, I tried to run python setup.py docs. This was the result:

usage: setup.py [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] ...]
or: setup.py --help [cmd1 cmd2 ...]
or: setup.py --help-commands
or: setup.py cmd --help

error: invalid command 'build_sphinx'

I then tried running python setup.py build_sphinx directly, but this failed as well (output anonymized):

running build_sphinx
Running Sphinx v1.7.0b2
usage: usage: setup.py [OPTIONS] -o <OUTPUT_PATH> <MODULE_PATH> [EXCLUDE_PATTERN, ...]
setup.py: error: unrecognized arguments: {$dir}/docs/../src/{$module}

Configuration error:
The configuration file (or one of the modules it imports) called sys.exit()

[FlorianWilhelm]

Did you install sphinx? Or better how did you install sphinx? Does import sphinx in the Python shell work? Which version of Sphinx is installed?

[FlorianWilhelm]

I could reproduce this in case Sphinx is not installed. Currently PyScaffold tries to install Sphinx locally as egg file but I don't like that solution any more and in Version 3.0 it even breaks. Better is to break directly and tell the user to install Sphinx. So the workaround for you is just to install Sphinx but I will add a better error message.

[Moritz90]

I can confirm that everything works after manually installing sphinx. I was relying on the documentation which claimed this wasn't necessary.

I guess this is mostly a bug in the documentation, then.

[FlorianWilhelm]

@Moritz90, thanks for confirming.

The problem was fixed in commit a4cf5ab, i.e., a more meaningful error message is emitted and the documentation was changed.