What do I need to do to "register" 'latexpdf' for Sphinx? - latex

Question

When I run Sphinx using 'latexpdf' I get an error, even though I have a complete working TeX installation on my machine:
Sphinx error: Builder name latexpdf not registered
What do I need to do to "register" latexpdf?

Answer 1

latexpdf is not a Sphinx builder; it is the name of a target in the Makefile created by sphinx-quickstart. This target uses the latex builder.
Executing sphinx-build -b latexpdf . _build produces the error in the question (as expected).
If you run make latexpdf, it works.
PyCharm was mentioned in a comment and the problem seems to stem from that program. The following is run when latexpdf is configured as a "Command" (Sphinx task):
sphinx_runner.py -b latexpdf <indir> <outdir>
The sphinx_runner.py script is very similar to sphinx_build (a wrapper for sphinx.cmdline.main()). Since the -b option is supposed provide the name of an actual builder, there is an error.

Answer 2

Use -M instead of -b. This invokes sphinx-build similarly to make latexpdf, e.g.:
sphinx-build -M latexpdf . _build
See #mzjn's answer for details.

Answer 3

Now have Pycharm 2016.3 generating a pdf form me based on information here: https://www.quora.com/How-to-create-a-PDF-out-of-Sphinx-documentation-tool
Install rst2pdf:
pip install rst2pdf
Edit a new Python Docs sphinx configuration and choose pdf as the command. Set input directory and directory to hold .pdf as output.
Edit the conf.py file and add the two lines that mention pdf:
extensions = [
'sphinx.ext.autodoc',
'sphinx.ext.todo',
'sphinx.ext.coverage',
'sphinx.ext.viewcode',
'rst2pdf.pdfbuilder'
]
pdf_documents = [('index', u'documentation', My Docs', u'Me'), ]
Now run the configuration and you should get a file called documentation.pdf in the output directory.

Answer 4

If you are interested in a pure Python solution, the following works for me:
import sphinx.cmd.make_mode as sphinx_build
OUT_DIR = "docs" # here you have your conf.py etc
build_output = os.path.join(OUT_DIR, "_build")
# build HTML (same as `make html`)
build_html_args = ["html", OUT_DIR, build_output]
sphinx_build.run_make_mode(args=build_html_args)
# build PDF latex (same as `make latexpdf`)
build_pdf_args = ["latexpdf", OUT_DIR, build_output]
sphinx_build.run_make_mode(args=build_pdf_args)
In fact, I've made a complete Python3 script that given a few convenient arguments generates the whole package documentation as HTML and PDF from scratch, with the RTD theme. It can be pretty handy if you want it to run it on different OS or Python interpreters (in my case i wanted to run it within Blender), or adapt it to your needs. It still has some dirty spots, due to some variables being hardcoded into conf.py. Let me know if you see any issues with it!
This is how it looks like:
HTML
PDF
Cheers,
Andres