Introduction

CodeLinks is a sphinx extension that provides a directive src-trace to trace the Sphinx-Needs need items defined in source files.

Instead of putting RST syntax in the comment, the need definition in source code is simplified to one-liner only, so that users can just write their customized one-line comment to have the traceability from the link between source code and documentation.

The provided directive leverages the other two modules SourceDiscovery and VirtualDocs, which are also packed in the extension, to discover source files and create the virtual documents for src-trace to consume.

Both SourceDiscovery and VirtualDocs provide the followings for the developers :

• Python API to extend other further use cases.

• CLI to have atomic steps in CI/CD pipelines.