How to check reST wellformedness with Sphinx?

Question

When uploading README in reStructuredText to PyPI they should be valid reST documents. We already have Sphinx as a requirement to build docs. Is it also possible to check one file with Sphinx?

Answer 1

It appears that distutils implements setup.py check -r command since Python 2.7 that does just that.

I am leaving the question open in case somebody discovers an easy way check arbitrary reST files with Sphinx without complicated configuration and setup. Perhaps Sphinx can provide more features like checking linked documents and external links.