Build the Documentation

Start by installing the required dependencies for the documentation.

Required dependencies

Debian/Ubuntu

For Debian/Ubuntu:

apt-get install python3-sphinx texlive-latex-recommended dvipng librsvg2-bin imagemagick docbook2x graphviz
python -m pip install sphinx-math-dollar sphinx-reredirects myst-parser linkify-it-py

If you get mpmath error, install python-mpmath package:

apt-get install python-mpmath

If you get matplotlib error, install python-matplotlib package:

apt-get install python-matplotlib

Fedora

For Fedora (and maybe other RPM-based distributions), install the prerequisites:

dnf install python3-sphinx librsvg2 ImageMagick docbook2X texlive-dvipng-bin
texlive-scheme-medium librsvg2-tools
python -m pip install sphinx-math-dollar sphinx-reredirects myst-parser linkify-it-py

If you get mpmath error, install python3-mpmath package:

dnf install python3-mpmath

If you get matplotlib error, install python3-matplotlib package:

dnf install python3-matplotlib

Mac

For Mac, first install homebrew: https://brew.sh/

Then install these packages with homebrew:

brew install imagemagick graphviz docbook librsvg

Install these packages with either pip or conda:

python -m pip install mpmath matplotlib sphinx sphinx-math-dollar sphinx-reredirects myst-parser linkify-it-py

Or:

conda install -c conda-forge mpmath matplotlib sphinx sphinx-math-dollar sphinx-reredirects myst-parser linkify-it-py

Making your Sphinx build successful on the Windows system is tricky because some dependencies like dvipng or docbook2x are not available.

Windows 10

For Windows 10, however, the Windows Subsystem for Linux can be a possible workaround solution, and you can install Ubuntu shell on your Windows system after following the tutorial below:

https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/WSL/blob/live/WSL/install-win10.md

In your command prompt, run ubuntu to transfer to Linux terminal, and follow the Debian/Ubuntu tutorial above to install the dependencies, and then you can run make html to build. (Note that you also have to install make via apt-get install make.)

If you want to change the directory in your prompt to your working folder of SymPy in the Windows file system, you can prepend cd /mnt/ to your file path in Windows, and run in your shell to navigate to the folder. (Also note that Linux uses / instead of \ for file paths.)

This method provides better compatibility than Cygwin or MSYS2 and more convenience than a virtual machine if you partially need a Linux environment for your workflow, however this method is only viable for Windows 10 64-bit users.

Build the Docs

The documentation can be built by running the makefile in the doc subdirectory.

To start, in your preferred web browser, use the drop down menu and select “open file” to navigate into the sympy/doc folder saved on your computer. In the doc folder, select the _build folder, then the html folder, and in the html folder, open the index.html file.

To build the HTML documentation, run:

cd doc

make html

This builds a local version of the documentation in doc/_build/html in your web browser.

Open _build/html/index.html.

PDF Documentation

Note

It is not necessary for the majority of contributors to build the PDF documentation. The PDF documentation will be built automatically on GitHub Actions on pull requests. PDF documentation for each release is included on the GitHub releases page.

If the PDF documentation build fails on GitHub Actions, 99% of the time this is due to bad LaTeX math formatting. Double check that any math you have added is formatted correctly, and make sure you use ``double backticks`` for code (`single backticks` will render as math, not code). See the resources in the style guide for tips on formatting LaTeX math.

Building the PDF documentation requires a few extra dependencies. First you will need to have a TeXLive installation that includes XeLaTeX and latexmk. You will also need to have Chrome or Chromium installed, as it is used to convert some SVG files for the PDF.

On Ubuntu, you can install these with:

apt-get install chromium-browser texlive texlive-xetex texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-latex-extra latexmk lmodern

On Mac, you can use:

brew install texlive

and also make sure the Google Chrome browser is installed in /Applications.

To build the pdf docs run:

cd doc

make latexpdf

The resulting PDF will be in:

_build/latex/sympy-<version>.pdf

where <version> is the SymPy version (e.g., sympy-1.10.dev.pdf).