have sphinx report broken links

Question

When building html documentation, how do you force sphinx to report, or create an error, on links that don't exist?

Specifically, I have properties and methods within my Python project that have been removed or renamed, and it is hard to find all the dead links with the sphinx generated html output.

I feel like I'm staring at the answer here: http://sphinx-doc.org/glossary.html, as descriped in the opening paragraph.

I'm obviously not understanding something.

Answer 1

Set the nitpicky configuration variable to True (you can also use the -n option when running sphinx-build).

In nitpicky mode, a cross-reference to a function (such as :func:`myfunc`), class, or other object that cannot be found will generate a warning message.

Answer 2

I think CheckExternalLinksBuilder is what you're looking for.

It's basically used by calling 'sphinx-build' with -b linkcheck option. Please see sphinx-build for more info. Also, take a look at the list of sphinx-extensions here and here.