Is doctrees folder required for displaying html docs with Sphinx?

Question

When hosting docs built with Sphinx, the build folder has two subdirectories: doctrees and html. Do I need both folders to display the docs correctly or only the contents of the html folder?

If I do need both, do the contents of the html folder go into my public_html folder and doctrees at the same level (outside the publicly accessible portion of my webserver, maintaining the current relative path relationship) or something else?

I can't find the answer in documentation for Sphinx.

Answer 1

The doctrees (or .doctrees) folder contains pickled caches of the source *.rst documents and it is not needed to display the docs correctly. You only need the contents of the html folder for that.

See http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/man/sphinx-build.html#cmdoption-sphinx-build-d.