WARNING: document isn't included in any toctree for included file

Question

I'm getting the warning:

WARNING: document isn't included in any toctree

for files that exist in the document because they've been explicitly included. So I have the index file:

.. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 2

   pages/0010-foo
   pages/0020-bar

In the file 0020-bar.rst, I'm specifically including a number of other files, as in:

.. contents:: :local:

.. include:: /pages/reference-architecture/technical-considerations/0070-baz.rst

But when I build the project, I still get a warning that 0070-baz.rst isn't in any toctree, as in:

/home/nick/Documents/myProject/docs/pages/reference-architecture/technical-considerations/0070-baz.rst:: WARNING: document isn't included in any toctree

The weird thing is that I can see the content in the output. Is this normal? Does this warning always appear for files that are explicitly included rather than included via toctree?

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you only want to ..include:: a document in another document, without having it appear in any toctree.

Add :orphan: to the top of your document to get rid of the warning.

This is a File-wide metadata option. Read more from the Sphinx documentation.