[Numpy-discussion] Using numpydoc outside of numpy

[Michael Droettboom]

I'm in the process of converting a project to use Sphinx for 
documentation, and would like to use the Numpy docstring standard with 
its sections etc.  It appears, however, that the numpydoc sphinxext is 
not installed but merely sits in doc/sphinxext.  I see that scipy uses 
an SVN external to get at this stuff, but I'd prefer not to do that if 
possible (my project may not live in SVN forever).  I see that numpydoc 
is separately installable (it has a setup.py), but then I assume users 
of my project who wish to build the docs must download the numpy source 
and know to explicitly install the numpydoc package.

Are there plans to install the numpydoc extension under the numpy 
install tree somewhere so that other projects can use it, simply by 
having numpy installed?  This is what we do with the plot_directive in 
matplotlib.  Is there a reason that's not a good idea for numpy?  Or is 
there a way for my project to use it that I'm missing?

Cheers,
Mike

-- 
Michael Droettboom
Science Software Branch
Operations and Engineering Division
Space Telescope Science Institute
Operated by AURA for NASA