Can I display a version history table in sphinx documentation using conf.py?

Question

I need to increment the count of version with each compilation and display the current date and display in the form of a table.

Answer 1

There is no sphinx inherent way to increment the version number automatically. But since conf.py is a python file you could implement a small function contained in conf.py which reads the version from a non-volatile memory (e. g. a json file), outputs your date table and updates the incremented version number in the non-volatile memory. Perhaps like this (if the json content is e. g. "[12,7,1,0]"):

# Read the version number from conf.json
fp = open( 'conf.json', 'r')
rev = json.load( fp ) # rev = [12,7,1,0]
fp.close

# The version info for the project you're documenting, acts as replacement for
# |version| and |release|, also used in various other places throughout the
# built documents.
#

# The short X.Y version.
version = '{}.{}'.format(rev[0], rev[1]) # version = "12.7"

# The full version, including alpha/beta/rc tags.
release = '{}.{}.{}.{}'.format(*rev) # release = "12.7.1.0"

# Write the incremented version number to conf.json
fp = open ( 'conf.json', 'w')
rev[0] += 1
json.dump( rev, fp )
fp.close()