Building Documentation

To build FRR documentation, first install the dependencies. Notice that if you plan to only build html documentation, you only need the package python3-sphinx.

sudo apt-get install -y python3-sphinx \
   texlive-latex-base texlive-latex-extra latexmk

To prepare for building both user and developer documentation, do:

cd doc
make

User documentation

To build html user documentation:

cd user
make html

This will generate html documentation files under _build/html/. With the main page named index.html.

PDF can then be built by:

cd user
make pdf

The generated PDF file will be saved at _build/latex/FRR.pdf

Developer documentation

To build the developer documentation:

cd developer
make html

This will generate html documentation files under _build/html/. With the main page named index.html.

PDF can then be built by:

cd developer
make pdf

The generated PDF file will be saved at _build/latex/FRR.pdf

Building HTML without configuring FRR

The make html targets under doc/user and doc/developer call into the top-level build system and expect a tree that has been through ./configure (and usually ./bootstrap.sh first if you build from Git).

If you only need HTML and have not configured the repository, run Sphinx from the repository root. Install python3-sphinx as above. For the developer manual you should also install graphviz (diagrams) and, if you want the same HTML theme as a full build, python3-sphinx-rtd-theme.

cd frr
python3 -m sphinx -b html -d doc/user/_build/.doctrees \
   doc/user doc/user/_build/html
python3 -m sphinx -b html -d doc/developer/_build/.doctrees \
   doc/developer doc/developer/_build/html

The generated trees are doc/user/_build/html/ and doc/developer/_build/html/, each with index.html at the top.

When config.status is absent, conf.py uses built-in defaults for version and install-path substitutions; values are filled from config.status when you build inside a configured tree.

PDF, Info, and other formats are still built through make in a configured build directory, since those flows rely on the Automake/Sphinx integration.