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- .. _faq:
- ==========================
- Frequently Asked Questions
- ==========================
- Why another tool for versioning Sphinx docs?
- ============================================
- While there are several sphinx extensions out there (e.g. `sphinxcontrib-versioning <sphinxcontrib_versioning_>`_ or `sphinx-versions <sphinx_versions_>`_) none of them seem to work correctly with recent sphinx versions (as of March 2020).
- Their code heavily relies on monkey-patching Sphinx internals at runtime, which is error-prone and makes the code a mess.
- In contrast, the extension part of ``sphinx-multiversion`` does not do any fancy patching, it just provides some HTML context variables.
- How does it work?
- =================
- Instead of running `sphinx build`, just run `sphinx-multiversion` from the root of your Git repository.
- It reads your Sphinx :file:`conf.py` file from the currently checked out Git branch for configuration, then generates a list of versions from local or remote tags and branches.
- This data is written to a JSON file - if you want to have a look what data will be generated, you can use the ``--dump-metadata`` flag.
- Then it copies the data for each version into separate temporary directories, builds the documentation from each of them and writes the output to the output directory.
- The :file:`conf.py` file from the currently checked out branch will be used to build old versions, so it's not necessary to make changes old branches or tags to add support for ``sphinx-multiversion``.
- This also means that theme improvements, template changes, etc. will automatically be applied to old versions without needing to add commits.
- Do I need to make changes to old branches or tags?
- ==================================================
- No, you don't. ``sphinx-multiversion`` will always use the :file:`conf.py` file from your currently checked out branch.
- The downside is that this behaviour restricts the kinds of changes you may do to your configuration, because it needs to retain compatibility with old branches.
- For example, if your :file:`conf.py` file hardcodes a path (e.g. for opening a file), but that file does not exist in some older branches that you want to build documentation for, this will cause issues.
- In these cases you will need to add a check if a file actually exists and adapt the path accordingly.
- What are the license terms of ``sphinx-multiversion``?
- ======================================================
- ``sphinx-multiversion`` is licensed under the terms of the `BSD 2-Clause license <bsd_2clause_license_>`_.
- .. _sphinxcontrib_versioning: https://github.com/sphinx-contrib/sphinxcontrib-versioning
- .. _sphinx_versions: https://github.com/Smile-SA/sphinx-versions
- .. _bsd_2clause_license: https://choosealicense.com/licenses/bsd-2-clause/
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