Building of docs does not work anymore

[Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>]

  Hi Paolo, hi John,

since the recent reworks with the Python venv, building of the docs does not 
work for me on my RHEL 8 installation anymore.

If I just run "configure" without any additional arguments, I get:

------------------------- 8< -----------------------------
$ ./configure
Using './build' as the directory for build output
python determined to be '/usr/bin/python3.8'
python version: Python 3.8.13
mkvenv: Creating non-isolated virtual environment at 'pyvenv'
mkvenv: checking for meson>=0.63.0
mkvenv: installing meson>=0.63.0
mkvenv: checking for sphinx>=1.6.0, sphinx-rtd-theme>=0.5.0

*** Ouch! ***

Could not provide build dependency 'sphinx>=1.6.0':
  • Python package 'sphinx' was not found nor installed.
  • mkvenv was configured to operate offline and did not check PyPI.
  • 'sphinx-build' was detected on your system at '/usr/bin/sphinx-build', 
but the Python package 'sphinx' was not found by this Python interpreter 
('/usr/bin/python3.8'). Typically this means that 'sphinx-build' has been 
installed against a different Python interpreter on your system.

Sphinx not found/usable, disabling docs.
------------------------- 8< -----------------------------

If I enable downloads and enforce --enable-docs , I get:

------------------------- 8< -----------------------------
./configure --enable-docs --enable-download
Using './build' as the directory for build output
python determined to be '/usr/bin/python3.8'
python version: Python 3.8.13
mkvenv: Creating non-isolated virtual environment at 'pyvenv'
mkvenv: checking for meson>=0.63.0
mkvenv: installing meson>=0.63.0
mkvenv: checking for sphinx>=1.6.0, sphinx-rtd-theme>=0.5.0
mkvenv: installing sphinx>=1.6.0, sphinx-rtd-theme>=0.5.0
ERROR: sphinx-rtd-theme 1.2.1 has requirement docutils<0.19, but you'll have 
docutils 0.20.1 which is incompatible.
ERROR: sphinx-rtd-theme 1.2.1 has requirement sphinx<7,>=1.6, but you'll 
have sphinx 7.0.1 which is incompatible.
------------------------- 8< -----------------------------

Any idea how to fix that?

  Thomas