How to customize sphinx documentation makefile?

Question

I am wondering if there is anyway to customize the sphinx documentation makefile?

What I want to achieve is that each time I do make html , sphinx will go to certain directory and copy the specific file to my source directory.

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For example:

Suppose I have a script called name foo.py under ~/bar directory. I want foo.py to be copied to ~/docs/source/ directory, which will be referenced by my project.rst .

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The reason I want to do this is that I want to keep the script I referenced in the doc to be the latest version and I hate to do copy-paste each time I do make html .

I know I can achieve this purpose with a simple shell script. But, I am wondering if I can do it directly through sphinx make file?

Thanks much!

Answer 1

An easy solution is to create a symbolic/hard link ( ln -s path/to/destination path/to/link , remove the -s for a hard link).

In your case, ln -s ~/bar/foo.py ~/docs/source/foo.py will create a link in the ~/docs/source/ directory (always up-to-date because it is just a link to your original file).

For fancier or more complete Makefile rule, have a look this customized sphinx Makefile . There is plenty of rules that send files over the web or from one directory to another (in my case ~/web-sphinx/.build/html/* to ~/Public/ ).