Does sphinx run my code on executing 'make html'?
Question: I inherited a rather large codebase that I want to create html-documentation
for. Since it is written in Python I decided to use sphinx because the users
of the code are accustomed to the design and functionality of the python-
documention that's created with sphinx. I used the command `sphinx-apidoc` to
automatically create the rst-files. I imported the module path into `sys.path`
so that sphinx can find the code.

So far so good. However, when I try to create the html using the command `make
html`, there are many tracebacks poping up and some of the examples in the
codebase seem to get executed. What can be the reason for that and how can I
prevent that from happening?


Answer: When using [autodoc](http://sphinx.pocoo.org/ext/autodoc.html#module-
sphinx.ext.autodoc), Sphinx imports the documented modules, so all module-
level code is executed. This happens every time you do "make html". In that
sense, Sphinx does "run" your code.

You may have to organize your code a bit differently to make the errors go
away (move module-level code to functions). See [this
question](http://stackoverflow.com/q/6912025/407651) for an example of what
can happen.

This is my guess but it may not be the whole story. It's hard to say more
without additional information.

