Developing extensions overview

This page contains general information about developing Sphinx extensions.

Make an extension depend on another extension

Sometimes your extension depends on the functionality of another Sphinx extension. Most Sphinx extensions are activated in a project’s conf.py file, but this is not available to you as an extension developer.

To ensure that another extension is activated as a part of your own extension, use the Sphinx.setup_extension() method. This will activate another extension at run-time, ensuring that you have access to its functionality.

For example, the following code activates the recommonmark extension:

def setup(app):
    app.setup_extension("recommonmark")

Note

Since your extension will depend on another, make sure to include it as a part of your extension’s installation requirements.