Emit reStructuredText from sphinx autodoc?

I had same problem and for one time generating of docs I've used quite ugly solution to patch Sphinx, see Make Sphinx generate RST class documentation from pydoc.

Not a full answer, more or less a starting point:

autodoc translates auto directives to python directives.So one can use autodoc events to get the translated python directives.

For example if you have the following mymodule.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-"""This is my module."""def my_test_func(a, b=1):    """This is my test function"""    return a + b class MyClass(object):    """This is my class"""    def __init__(x, y='test'):        """The init of my class"""        self.x = float(x)        self.y = y     def my_method(self, z):         """This is my method.        :param z: a number        :type z: float, int        :returns: the sum of self.x and z        :rtype: float        """        return self.x + z 

sphinx-apidoc will create

mymodule Module===============.. automodule:: mymodule    :members:    :undoc-members:    :show-inheritance:

The following extension (or addition to conf.py):

NAMES = []DIRECTIVES = {}def get_rst(app, what, name, obj, options, signature,            return_annotation):    doc_indent = '    '    directive_indent = ''    if what in ['method', 'attribute']:        doc_indent += '    '        directive_indent += '    '    directive = '%s.. py:%s:: %s' % (directive_indent, what, name)    if signature:  # modules, attributes, ... don't have a signature        directive += signature    NAMES.append(name)    rst = directive + '\n\n' + doc_indent + obj.__doc__ + '\n'    DIRECTIVES[name] = rst def write_new_docs(app, exception):    txt = ['My module documentation']    txt.append('-----------------------\n')    for name in NAMES:        txt.append(DIRECTIVES[name])    print '\n'.join(txt)    with open('../doc_new/generated.rst', 'w') as outfile:        outfile.write('\n'.join(txt))def setup(app):    app.connect('autodoc-process-signature', get_rst)    app.connect('build-finished', write_new_docs)

will give you:

My module documentation-----------------------.. py:module:: mymoduleThis is my module... py:class:: mymodule.MyClass(x, y='test')    This is my class    .. py:method:: mymodule.MyClass.my_method(z)        This is my method.        :param z: a number        :type z: float, int        :returns: the sum of self.x and z        :rtype: float.. py:function:: mymodule.my_test_func(a, b=1)    This is my test function

However as autodoc emits no event, when the translation is completed, So further processing done by autodoc has to be adapted to the docstrings here.