Sphinx Python ImportError: cannot import name

Question

I am using Sphinx . When executing the command make html , my files that define an abstract class or are derived from an abstract class are getting an error.

Error

File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/sphinx/ext/autodoc.py", line 529 
in import_object
    __import__(self.module)
File "/home/pi/.../abstractNode.py", line 6, in <module>
    from abc import ABC, abstractclassmethod
ImportError: cannot import name ABC

Code referenced

Minimal example:

File: abstractNode.py

from abc import ABC, abstractclassmethod

class abstractNode(ABC):
    '''
    abstract parent
    '''
    @abstractmethod
    def moduleNode(self, parameter=[]):
        '''
        Implement Node Functionality here
        '''
        pass

File: Node.py

from foo.bar import abstractNode

class Node(abstractNode):
    '''
    implementation of abstract parent
    '''

    def moduleNode(self, parameter=[]):
        '''
        implementation written here
        '''
        pass

The result is that the documentation for those abstract class dependencies are nearly empty, whereas classes not using ABC are fine.

It doesn't have any problem importing any other package.

Answer 1

Thanks to pierre-de-buyl and mzjn . You indeed identified the problem:

Although ABC and abstract classes are defined in 2.7 documentation , and are present in /usr/lib/python2.7, you must force sphinx to use python 3.x

Unfortunately I have not found an elegant method to do so, but my method descibed below solves the problem:

1. Uninstall sphinx

2. Install sphinx with python3:

    sudo apt-get install python3-sphinx 

   or

    sudo pip3 install sphinx 

   (in contrast to python-sphinx or pip install )

3. Create a sphinx documentation the way you are used to

(maybe someone has a better idea to force sphinx to use python 3.x?)