Building the documentation in the master (3.8) branch is currently broken:

% make html
make html
mkdir -p build
Building NEWS from Misc/NEWS.d with blurb
PATH=./venv/bin:$PATH sphinx-build -b html -d build/doctrees -D latex_elements.papersize=  . build/html 
Running Sphinx v1.7.4
loading pickled environment... not yet created

Theme error:
no theme named 'python_docs_theme' found (missing theme.conf?)
make: *** [build] Error 2

Try `make venv && make html`.

Or just "make venv html".

If you already have sphinx installed somewhere, you can just:

pip install python-docs-theme

On May 16, 2018, at 13:34, Ned Deily <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
> 
> Or just "make venv html".

Shouldn’t the html target depend on venv then?

> Shouldn’t the html target depend on venv then?

Back when we added support for blurb, I tried to make it such that "make html" could easily use already installed versions of sphinx-build and blurb and not require a venv.  I had a particular use case for that.  But if someone wants to modify the Docs Makefile to require using the venv recipe, I wouldn't object too strongly.  Another approach, I guess, would be to check that the python-docs-theme is available to sphinx-build and give a better message: not sure how best to do that in the current Makefile.