ReadTheDocs + Sphinx + setuptools_scm: how to?

Question

I have a project where I manage the version through git tags. Then, I use setuptools_scm to get this information in my setup.py and also generates a file (_version.py) that gets included when generating the wheel for pip.

This file is not tracked by git since:

1. it has the same information that can be gathered by git
2. it would create a circular situation where building the wheel will modify the version which changes the sources and a new version will be generated

Now, when I build the documentation, it becomes natural to fetch this version from _version.py and this all works well locally.

However, when I try to do this within ReadTheDocs, the building of the documentation fails because _version.py is not tracked by git, so ReadTheDocs does not find it when fetching the sources from the repository.

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EDIT: I have tried to use the method proposed in the duplicate, which is the same as what setuptools_scm indicate in the documentation, i.e. using in docs/conf.py:

from pkg_resources import get_distribution
__version__ = get_distribution('numeral').version
... # I use __version__ to define Sphinx variables

but I get:

pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: The 'numeral' distribution was not found and is required by the application

(Again, building the documentation locally works correctly.)

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How could I solve this issue without resorting to maintaining the version number in two places?

Answer 1

Eventually the issue was that ReadTheDocs did not have the option to build my package active by default and I was expecting this to happen.

All I had to do was to enable "Install Project" in the Advanced Settings / Default Settings.