[I split the original question into two after more testing and research]
I defined my own configuration value in conf.py and wrote a minimal extension to make it visible from rst files.
in conf.py:
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath('.')) extensions = ['sphinx.ext.ifconfig', 'myExt'] testlevel = 2
in a local myExt.py:
def setup(app): app.add_config_value('testlevel', '', True)
This works just fine; test.rst includes:
.. ifconfig:: testlevel == 2 Hurray, it seems to work
According to the doc of sphinx.ext.ifconfig, it seems possible to call *app.add_config_value* directly from conf.py. Can anyone tell me how to do this?