Read the Docs YAML Config¶

Read the Docs now has support for configuring builds with a YAML file. The file, readthedocs.yml (or .readthedocs.yml), must be in the root directory of your project.

Warning

This feature is in a beta state. Please file an issue if you find anything wrong.

Supported Settings¶

formats¶

Default: htmlzip, pdf, epub
Options: htmlzip, pdf, epub, none

The formats of your documentation you want to be built. Choose none to build none of the formats.

Note

We will always build an HTML & JSON version of your documentation. These are used for web serving & search indexing, respectively.

# Don't build any extra formats
formats:
    - none

# Build PDF & ePub
formats:
    - epub
    - pdf

requirements_file¶

Default: None
Type: Path (specified from the root of the project)

The path to your Pip requirements file.

requirements_file: requirements/docs.txt

conda¶

The conda block allows for configuring our support for Conda.

conda.file¶

Default: None
Type: Path (specified from the root of the project)

The file option specified the Conda environment file to use.

conda:
    file: environment.yml

Note

Conda is only supported via the YAML file.

python¶

The python block allows you to configure aspects of the Python executable used for building documentation.

python.version¶

Default: 2.7
Options: 2.7, 2, 3.5, 3

This is the version of Python to use when building your documentation. If you specify only the major version of Python, the highest supported minor version will be selected.

The supported Python versions depends on the version of the build image your project is using. The default build image that is used to build documentation contains support for Python 2.7 and 3.5.

There is also an image in testing that supports Python versions 2.7, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6. If you would like access to this build image, you can sign up for beta access here:

https://goo.gl/forms/AKEoeWHixlzVfqKT2

python:
   version: 3.5

python.setup_py_install¶

Default: False
Type: Boolean

When true, install your project into the Virtualenv with python setup.py install when building documentation.

python:
   setup_py_install: true

python.pip_install¶

Default: False
Type: Boolean

When true, install your project into the Virtualenv with pip when building documentation.

python:
   pip_install: true

python.extra_requirements¶

Default: []
Type: List

List of extra requirements sections to install, additionally to the package default dependencies. Only works if python.pip_install option above is set to True.

Let’s say your Python package has a setup.py which looks like this:

from setuptools import setup

setup(
    name="my_package",
    # (...)
    install_requires=[
        'requests',
        'simplejson'],
    extras_require={
        'tests': [
            'nose',
            'pycodestyle >= 2.1.0'],
        'docs': [
            'sphinx >= 1.4',
            'sphinx_rtd_theme']}
)

Then to have all dependencies from the tests and docs sections installed in addition to the default requests and simplejson, use the extra_requirements as such:

python:
    extra_requirements:
        - tests
        - docs

Behind the scene the following Pip command will be run:

$ pip install -e .[tests,docs]