Conditional toctree in Sphinx

Question

I want to do multiple versions of a documentation, which differ in the sections that are included. To achieve this I would usually use either the only directive or the ifcon

Answer 1

My solution is to place the conditional content in a separate directory 'intern' and using a tag 'internal'.

In conf.py I added the lines

if tags.has('internal'):
    exclude_patters = ['_build']
else:
    exclude_patterns = ['_build', 'intern*']

Now when I pass the 'internal' flag on the command line I get all, otherwise everything except the contents in the intern directory.

The tag internal can be used in combination with only.

The ToC contains references to intern/somedoc and they are included or skipped as required. I do get a number of warnings about missing pages but those can be silenced.