How can I run Sphinx doctests as part of setup.py?

Question

I want to include a setuptools command to run Sphinx doctest as part of my package setup.py, like this:

$ python setup.py sphinx_doctest

I have a package structure like:

my_pkg
|---__init__.py
|---module1.py    # Containing reStructuredText docstrings with examples
docs
|---build
|---|---doctrees
|---source
|---|---conf.py   # Sphinx config
|---|---index.rst # Sphinx index file
setup.py

How can I implement a setuptools command that does the equivalent of:

$ sphinx-build -b doctest -d docs/build/doctrees docs/source docs/build

Answer 1

Subclass setuptools.Command and use sphinx.application.Sphinx to launch the sphinx.ext.doctest builder.

In setup.py:

from setuptools import setup, Command

class Doctest(Command):
    description = 'Run doctests with Sphinx'
    user_options = []

    def initialize_options(self):
        pass

    def finalize_options(self):
        pass

    def run(self):
        from sphinx.application import Sphinx
        sph = Sphinx('./docs/source', # source directory
                     './docs/source, # directory containing conf.py
                     './docs/build', # output directory
                     './docs/build/doctrees', # doctree directory
                     'doctest') # finally, specify the doctest builder
        sph.build()

sphinx_requires = ['sphinx>=1.3.1']

setup(
    name='mypkg',
    version='0.0.1',
    description='My Package',
    packages=['mypkg'],
    cmdclass={
        'doctests': Doctest
    },
    extras_require={
        'build_sphinx': sphinx_requires,
    },
)