Simple ReadTheDocs config to publish API docs

Here is an example of a simple ReadTheDocs integration to automatically generate your documentation with Pydoctor.

Note

This kind of integration should not be confused with Sphinx support that can also be used to run pydoctor inside ReadTheDocs as part of the standard Sphinx build process.

This page, on the other hand, documents how to simply run pydoctor and publish on ReadTheDocs by using build customizations features.

This example only includes a configuration file (.readthedocs.yaml), but the repository must also have been integrated to ReadTheDocs (by linking your Github account and importing your project for instance or by manual webhook configuration).

The config file below assume you’re cloning your repository with http(s) protocol and that repository is a GitHub instance (the value of --html-viewsource-base could vary depending on your git server).

Though, a similar process can be applied to Gitea, GitLab, Bitbucket ot others git servers.

Just substitute (projectname) and (packagedirectory) with the appropriate information.

version: 2
build:
  os: "ubuntu-22.04"
  tools:
    python: "3.13"
  commands:
    - pip install pydoctor
    - |
      pydoctor \
      --project-name=(projectname) \
      --project-version=${READTHEDOCS_GIT_IDENTIFIER} \
      --project-url=${READTHEDOCS_GIT_CLONE_URL%*.git} \
      --html-viewsource-base=${READTHEDOCS_GIT_CLONE_URL%*.git}/tree/${READTHEDOCS_GIT_COMMIT_HASH} \
      --html-base-url=${READTHEDOCS_CANONICAL_URL} \
      --html-output $READTHEDOCS_OUTPUT/html/ \
      --docformat=restructuredtext \
      --intersphinx=https://docs.python.org/3/objects.inv \
      ./(packagedirectory)

More on ReadTheDocs build customizations.