Sphinx is a tool that makes it easy to create intelligent and beautiful documentation. It allows you to compose your documentation from restructured Text files and outputs HTML pages or PDF documents. See the Sphinx page for details.

If you want to see an example of what you will get at the end of this tutorial, go to http://packages.python.org/plone.app.discussion/.

Installation

In order to install Sphinx into your buildout, you have to add collective.recipe.sphinx to your buildout configuration.

For Plone 3 add:

[buildout]
parts =
    ...
    sphinxbuilder
    ...

[sphinxbuilder]
recipe = collective.recipe.sphinxbuilder

For Plone 4 add:

[buildout]
parts =
    ...
    sphinxbuilder
    ...

[sphinxbuilder]
recipe = collective.recipe.sphinxbuilder
interpreter = ${buildout:directory}/bin/zopepy

For more details and configuration options, see collective.recipe.sphinxbuilder.

Create Sphinx Documentation

Run the spinx-quickstart command to initially create your Sphinx documentation:

$ bin/sphinx-quickstart

You have to answer a few questions, choose docs/source as source folder.

$ ./bin/sphinx-quickstart 
Welcome to the Sphinx quickstart utility.

Please enter values for the following settings (just press Enter to
accept a default value, if one is given in brackets).

Enter the root path for documentation.
> Root path for the documentation [.]: docs

You have two options for placing the build directory for Sphinx output.
Either, you use a directory "_build" within the root path, or you separate
"source" and "build" directories within the root path.
> Separate source and build directories (y/N) [n]: y

Inside the root directory, two more directories will be created; "_templates"
for custom HTML templates and "_static" for custom stylesheets and other static
files. You can enter another prefix (such as ".") to replace the underscore.
> Name prefix for templates and static dir [_]: 

The project name will occur in several places in the built documentation.
> Project name: <My Project Name>
> Author name(s): <My Name>

Sphinx has the notion of a "version" and a "release" for the
software. Each version can have multiple releases. For example, for
Python the version is something like 2.5 or 3.0, while the release is
something like 2.5.1 or 3.0a1.  If you don't need this dual structure,
just set both to the same value.
> Project version:
> Project release []: 

The file name suffix for source files. Commonly, this is either ".txt"
or ".rst".  Only files with this suffix are considered documents.
> Source file suffix [.rst]: .txt

One document is special in that it is considered the top node of the
"contents tree", that is, it is the root of the hierarchical structure
of the documents. Normally, this is "index", but if your "index"
document is a custom template, you can also set this to another filename.
> Name of your master document (without suffix) [index]: 

Please indicate if you want to use one of the following Sphinx extensions:
> autodoc: automatically insert docstrings from modules (y/N) [n]: y
> doctest: automatically test code snippets in doctest blocks (y/N) [n]: y
> intersphinx: link between Sphinx documentation of different projects (y/N) [n]: y
> todo: write "todo" entries that can be shown or hidden on build (y/N) [n]: y
> coverage: checks for documentation coverage (y/N) [n]: y
> pngmath: include math, rendered as PNG images (y/N) [n]: 
> jsmath: include math, rendered in the browser by JSMath (y/N) [n]: 
> ifconfig: conditional inclusion of content based on config values (y/N) [n]: 

A Makefile and a Windows command file can be generated for you so that you
only have to run e.g. `make html' instead of invoking sphinx-build
directly.
> Create Makefile? (Y/n) [y]:  
> Create Windows command file? (Y/n) [y]: n

Build your documentation by running the sphinxbuilder script:

$ bin/sphinxbuilder

Writing Sphinx Documentation

See the Sphinx documentation for details.

Document Zope Interfaces with repoze.sphinx.autointerface

repoze.sphinx.autointerface allows you to generate documentation from zope interfaces. You can install it with:

$ easy_install repoze.sphinx.autointerface

You have to add repoze.sphinx.autointerface to your conf.py file as well

extensions = [...
              'repoze.sphinx.autointerface',
             ]

You can include interface via the autointerface directive:

  .. autointerface:: plone.app.discussion.interfaces.IConversation

For more details, see repoze.sphinx.autointerface

Upload Sphinx Documentation to PyPi

After building your Sphinx documentation you can upload it to packages.python.org with Sphinx-PyPI-upload. You can install it with:

$ easy_install Sphinx-PyPI-upload

You have to add the configuration for the upload in your setup.cfg file:

[build_sphinx]
source-dir = docs/source
build-dir  = docs
all_files  = 1

[upload_sphinx]
upload-dir = docs/html

Now you can upload the Sphinx documentation with:

$ python2.6 setup.py upload_sphinx

Your Sphinx documentation should now be available on

http://packages.python.org/<your-package-name>

Futher Reading

For a working Sphinx documentation example see:

http://packages.python.org/plone.app.discussion/

The source code can be found here:

http://svn.plone.org/svn/plone/plone.app.discussion