Unable to build Matplotlib docs on Windows (Graphviz/LaTeX/Sphinx errors)

Development
1

Hi everyone,

I’m a new contributor trying to work on issue #25914.

I cloned the repository and created a virtual environment on Windows, but I’m unable to successfully build the documentation. I’m encountering repeated Sphinx/configuration/build errors and I think I might be missing some required setup steps.

I’m quite new to open source and may not fully understand the build process yet. Could someone please guide me through the correct minimal setup to get Matplotlib running and build the docs on Windows?

Thank you very much for your help.

2

Hi, have you installed the dependencies? Dependencies — Matplotlib 3.11.0.dev1769+g08fe8bc4a documentation

3

Thank you for pointing this out. I have not installed Graphviz and LaTeX yet. I will install these dependencies and try building the docs again.

4

Hi, sorry for the late reply.
I tried setting up the docs build multiple times and installed the required dependencies, including LaTeX and Graphviz, but I kept running into repeated build and gallery errors and got stuck.
I had to step away from the project because of this. Thanks for your time and guidance.

5

Can you paste the errors please?

6

Thanks for checking in.

Most of the issues I ran into were during the docs build — mainly Sphinx gallery examples failing while running python -m sphinx -b html . _build/html, along with some configuration errors. I did install LaTeX and Graphviz, but I kept hitting different errors. I don’t have the logs saved anymore and can’t easily reproduce everything right now. Thanks for your patience and willingness to help.

7

If it’s the .MP4 error, you can ignore that - the docs build anyway.