Read the Docs Documentation Hosting

Read the Docs is a free and open-source platform for hosting, building, and versioning technical documentation. Founded in 2010 by Eric Holscher (co-founder of the Django Software Foundation's documentation team), Gregory Bowne, and Charles Leifer, the project originated from the Django community and has become the standard documentation hosting platform for Python and many other ecosystems. Read the Docs is maintained by the Read the Docs team and supported by the Django Software Foundation. Key features: Sphinx integration: the primary documentation tool is Sphinx, a Python documentation generator. The service reads the conf.py and builds HTML documentation automatically from reStructuredText (.rst) files. Markdown support: via the recommonmark or myst-parser extensions, Markdown files can also be used. Versioned documentation: every Git tag, branch, or release gets its own documentation version. Users can switch between versions (latest, stable, v2.1, v2.0) from a dropdown. This ensures documentation always matches the code version. Automated builds: when code is pushed to the repository, the platform automatically rebuilds and deploys the documentation. Build status is visible in the admin panel. Custom domains: host documentation on custom subdomains (docs.example.com). Search: built-in full-text search across all documentation pages. PDF and EPUB export: automatically generate downloadable PDF and EPUB versions of the documentation. Themes: the default theme (sphinx_rtd_theme) is responsive and supports multiple languages. Conda and pip environments: configure build environments with a requirements.txt or environment.yml. Embed content: embed live code examples from the documentation. Subprojects: organize multiple related projects under a main project. API documentation (Breathe, Doxygen integration). Python. MIT.