MkDocs Intersphinx Generator Plugin

A MkDocs plugin that generates Sphinx-compatible objects.inv files for intersphinx cross-referencing.

Features

• Page-level references via YAML frontmatter
• Header-level references via HTML comments
• Generates Sphinx-compatible objects.inv files

Installation

Development Installation

From the plugin directory:

pip install -e .

Or with development dependencies:

pip install -e ".[dev]"

Usage

1. Configure the Plugin

Add to your mkdocs.yml:

plugins:
  - search
  - intersphinx:
      enabled: true
      project: "My Project"
      version: "latest"

2. Add References to Your Pages

Page-Level References (YAML Frontmatter)

---
ref: my-page-reference
title: My Page Title
---

# My Page

Content here...

Header-Level References (HTML Comments)

# My Page

<!-- ref:important-section -->
## Important Section

This section can be referenced by other projects.

<!-- ref:another-topic -->
### Another Topic

More content...

3. Build Your Site

mkdocs build

The plugin will generate site/objects.inv containing all references.

Configuration Options

Using Generated Inventory

From Sphinx Projects

In your Sphinx conf.py:

intersphinx_mapping = {
    'myproject': ('https://example.com/docs/', None),
}

Reference in reStructuredText:

See :doc:`myproject:my-page-reference`
See :ref:`myproject:important-section`

From MkDocs with mkdocstrings

In your mkdocs.yml:

plugins:
  - mkdocstrings:
      handlers:
        python:
          import:
            - https://example.com/docs/objects.inv

Development

Running Tests

pytest

Test Coverage

pytest --cov=mkdocs_intersphinx --cov-report=html

How It Works

1. Parse Phase (on_page_markdown): Extract HTML ref comments and parse headers
2. Collection Phase (on_page_content): Collect inventory entries with actual anchor IDs from TOC
3. Generation Phase (on_post_build): Create and write objects.inv file using sphobjinv

Reference Naming Guidelines

• Use lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens, and underscores only
• Use hyphens to separate words (e.g., thread-safety-levels)
• Make names descriptive but concise
• Ensure names are unique across your documentation

Examples

See the tests/ directory for example usage.

License

MIT

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please open an issue or pull request.