Inconsistent working directory for sphinx build

[nlgranger]

What's the problem this feature will solve?

When building a sphinx-based project, the build does not run in the project directory but rather in the directory which contains the conf.py file. All other commands run in the project directory.

This breaks relative paths that might be used while evaluating conf.py or while running sphinx extensions.

python -m sphinx -T -b html -d _build/doctrees -D language=en . $READTHEDOCS_OUTPUT/html

Describe the solution you'd like

Use the cloned project root as working directory for sphinx build.

Alternative solutions

None

Additional context

In the build log, the sphinx command looks like this:

python -m sphinx -T -b html -d _build/doctrees -D language=en . $READTHEDOCS_OUTPUT/html

The . should be parent directory of the sphinx configuration file.

[humitos]

When building a sphinx-based project, the build does not run in the project directory but rather in the directory which contains the conf.py file. All other commands run in the project directory.

This is correct.

Ideally, we should run all the commands from the project directory. Unfortunately, changing this at this point will break a lot of projects that are already configured to use the current directory for relative paths. I'm not sure there is a good solution here, maybe we can make new projects to run the Sphinx command from the project directory. However, I'm not sure if it's worth the effort and complications.

[nlgranger]

Indeed, changing the default behaviour would definitely break many projects.

Maybe consider adding a workdir parameter to the sphinx configuration which lets you choose between the project root or the sphinx conf directory?

[stsewd]

also, extensions shouldn't rely on the cwd to resolve files, but be relative to the directory of the current file, e.g Path(__file__).parent