.. _faq:

==========================
Frequently Asked Questions
==========================

Why another tool for versioning Sphinx docs?
============================================

While there are several sphinx extensions out there (e.g.  `sphinxcontrib-versioning <sphinxcontrib_versioning_>`_  or `sphinx-versions <sphinx_versions_>`_) none of them seem to work correctly with recent sphinx versions (as of March 2020).
Their code heavily relies on monkey-patching Sphinx internals at runtime, which is error-prone and makes the code a mess.

In contrast, the extension part of ``sphinx-multiversion`` does not do any fancy patching, it just provides some HTML context variables.


How does it work?
=================

Instead of running `sphinx build`, just run `sphinx-multiversion` from the root of your Git repository.
It reads your Sphinx :file:`conf.py` file from the currently checked out Git branch for configuration, then generates a list of versions from local or remote tags and branches.
This data is written to a JSON file - if you want to have a look what data will be generated, you can use the ``--dump-metadata`` flag.

Then it copies the data for each version into separate temporary directories, builds the documentation from each of them and writes the output to the output directory.
The :file:`conf.py` file from the currently checked out branch will be used to build old versions, so it's not necessary to make changes old branches or tags to add support for ``sphinx-multiversion``.
This also means that theme improvements, template changes, etc. will automatically be applied to old versions without needing to add commits.

Do I need to make changes to old branches or tags?
==================================================

No, you don't. ``sphinx-multiversion`` will always use the :file:`conf.py` file from you currently checked out branch.

What are the license terms of ``sphinx-multiversion``?
======================================================

``sphinx-multiversion`` is licensed under the terms of the `BSD 2-Clause license <bsd_2clause_license_>`_.


.. _sphinxcontrib_versioning: https://github.com/sphinx-contrib/sphinxcontrib-versioning
.. _sphinx_versions: https://github.com/Smile-SA/sphinx-versions
.. _bsd_2clause_license: https://choosealicense.com/licenses/bsd-2-clause/