The Python Wiki

A Sphinx-based rebuild of the Python community wiki, migrated from the old MoinMoin installation. Three wiki sections live here: python, psf, and jython.

Setup

You'll need uv and Python 3.14+.

make install

That's it. No virtualenv management, no pip — uv handles everything.

Contributing

All content lives as Markdown files under python/, psf/, and jython/. Each section has its own index.md with a toctree. Subdirectories group related pages (workgroups, conferences, etc.) and have their own index.md files too.

To edit a page, find the .md file and change it directly. The format is MyST Markdown — standard Markdown plus a few Sphinx directives like {toctree} and {admonition}.

Previewing your changes

The wiki has ~3500 pages across all three sections, so a full build takes a while. You almost certainly don't need to build everything.

Build just the section you're working on:

## PSF wiki only (~400 pages, builds in under a minute)
make docs-serve-fast WIKI=psf

## Jython wiki only (~460 pages)
make docs-serve-fast WIKI=jython

## Python wiki (~3400 pages — still the big one)
make docs-serve-fast WIKI=python

Build a single subsection when you're focused on one area:

## Just the Packaging WG pages (~113 pages, builds in seconds)
make docs-serve-fast WIKI=psf SECTION=Packaging

## Just the Advocacy section
make docs-serve-fast WIKI=python SECTION=Advocacy

## Just the Summer of Code pages
make docs-serve-fast WIKI=python SECTION=SummerOfCode

Both commands start a live-reload server — save a file and the browser refreshes automatically.

Full build (all sections, for CI or final checks):

make docs

Adding a new page

1. Create a .md file in the right directory
2. Add it to the parent index.md toctree
3. Start the file with a top-level heading (# Page Title)

If you're creating a new subdirectory, add an index.md inside it with a toctree listing its pages, then reference that subdir/index from the parent toctree.

Page format

Pages migrated from MoinMoin have a legacy notice at the top — you can remove it if you're substantially rewriting the content. New pages don't need one.

A minimal page looks like:

## My Page Title

Content goes here. Standard Markdown works — links, lists, code blocks, tables.

Use [MyST directives](https://myst-parser.readthedocs.io/en/latest/syntax/roles-and-directives.html)
when you need admonitions, toctrees, or tab panels.

Redirects from the old wiki

The old MoinMoin wiki used a custom URL encoding for special characters — spaces became (20), slashes became (2f), umlauts like Ä became (c384), and so on. The new site uses plain decoded filenames.

All 5400+ redirects live in _redirects.json, handled by sphinxext-rediraffe. This file covers two kinds of redirects:

• Old MoinMoin URLs — /jython/Aktuelle(c384)nderungen redirects to /jython/AktuelleÄnderungen
• Reorganization moves — pages that were moved into subdirectories during the migration

If you reorganize pages or move files around, add entries to _redirects.json so old links don't break. After moving files, you can regenerate the MoinMoin URL redirects with:

make redirects

This scans the raw HTML archive, builds the encoded-to-decoded mapping, and merges it with any existing reorganization redirects. It won't overwrite manual entries.

Other make targets

make help             Show all available targets
make sync             Pull raw HTML from the wiki server
make convert          Re-run the MoinMoin-to-Markdown conversion
make redirects        Regenerate old wiki URL redirects
make lint             Run pre-commit hooks
make clean            Remove all build artifacts
make docs-clean       Remove just the Sphinx build output

Project structure

python/               Python wiki content
psf/                  PSF wiki content
jython/               Jython wiki content
scripts/              Conversion and maintenance scripts
  convert.py          MoinMoin HTML → MyST Markdown converter
  strip_attrs.py      Strips pandoc attribute syntax from .md files
  gen_old_wiki_redirects.py
                      Generates MoinMoin URL → decoded path redirects
_redirects.json       All redirect mappings (old URLs + reorganization moves)
_templates/           Sphinx HTML templates
_static/              CSS and static assets
conf.py               Sphinx configuration