update doc building w rtd

README.md

@@ -67,12 +67,7 @@ Parallelization
 * Additional Performance Considerations for `fit()`
 * Full parameter listings
 
-To build the
-documentation locally, you will need `sphinx`, `recommonmark`, and
-`sphinx-markdown-tables` (to incorporate .md files)
-
-The documentation can be built locally using the `(n)make` target
-`htmldocs` and is generated in `docs/build/html/index.html`. 
+To build the documentation see `docs/dev_notes.md`.
 
 ## Installation
 Currently you need to download the repo and build and install the package locally. The commands for building the package are in the makefile.

docs/dev_notes.md

@@ -11,8 +11,15 @@ You can can do `update` rather than `create` to update existing ones (to avoid [
 Note: When regenerating these files (`conda env export > test/SparseSC_*.yml`) make sure to remove the final `prefix` line since that's computer specific.
 
 ## Building the docs
-Requires Python >=3.6 and packages: `sphinx`, `recommonmark`, `sphinx-markdown-tables`.
-Index HTML file is at `docs/build/html/index.html`.
+Requires Python >=3.6 and packages: `sphinx`, `recommonmark`, `sphinx-markdown-tables`. 
+Use `(n)make htmldocs` and an index HTML file is madeat `docs/build/html/index.html`.
+
+To build a mini-RTD environment to test building docs:
+1) You can make a new environment with Python 3.7
+2) update `pip`
+3) `pip install --upgrade --no-cache-dir -r docs/rtd_base.txt`
+4) `pip install --exists-action=w --no-cache-dir -r docs/rtd-requirements.txt`
+
 There are some errors from our setup that aren't present in RTD (they use Python 3.7 and a pip environment with the latest packages).
 
 ## Running examples

docs/rtd-base.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+setuptools==41.0.1
+mock==1.0.1
+pillow==5.4.1
+alabaster>=0.7,<0.8,!=0.7.5
+six
+commonmark==0.8.1
+recommonmark==0.5.0
+sphinx<2
+sphinx-rtd-theme<0.5
+readthedocs-sphinx-ext<2.2

docs/rtd-requirements.txt

@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ asn1crypto==0.24.0
 astroid==1.6.5
 Babel==2.6.0
 certifi==2018.8.24
-cffi==1.11.5
+cffi==1.12.3
 chardet==3.0.4
 colorama==0.3.9
 CommonMark==0.5.4