Change the settings to make the html folder

Why to change the settings

I have the documents used to create the documentation in a folder called “docs”. When I create the html files with the make html command, the html files are inserted in doc/build.html.

But when I uplpoad the documentation to github, if I want github pages to display my page, I need to have it in a folder called “doc” in the root of the project. So it would be very convenient if that was the default setting, instead of having to drag and drop (+ there is the risk of forgetting to do it).

How to change the settings

So let’s be honnest, chatGPT helped me with this one 😃, since I do not often deal with makefiles.

Here are the steps:

  1. Change the makefile

in the BUILDDIR line, I changed the relative path to make it the docs directory, at the same level of the doc folder containing the Sphinx project:

# Minimal makefile for Sphinx documentation
#

# You can set these variables from the command line.
SPHINXOPTS    =
SPHINXBUILD   = sphinx-build
SOURCEDIR     = source
BUILDDIR      = build
DOCDIR        = docs

# Put it first so that "make" without argument is like "make help".
help:
	@$(SPHINXBUILD) -M help "$(SOURCEDIR)" "$(BUILDDIR)" $(SPHINXOPTS) $(O)

.PHONY: help Makefile

# Catch-all target: route all unknown targets to Sphinx using the new
# "make mode" option.  $(O) is meant as a shortcut for $(SPHINXOPTS).
%: Makefile
	@$(SPHINXBUILD) -M $@ "$(SOURCEDIR)" "$(BUILDDIR)" $(SPHINXOPTS) $(O)

# Custom target to build and copy to docs folder
html:
	@$(SPHINXBUILD) -M html "$(SOURCEDIR)" "$(BUILDDIR)" $(SPHINXOPTS) $(O)
	xcopy /E /Y build\html ..\docs

  1. Change the python configuration file

Add the following 2 lines to your conf.py file:

html_baseurl = '.'
html_output_dir = '../docs'