---
id: collective-checkdocs
version: "0.2"
license: GPL
license_treatment: copyleft
maintenance: abandoned
---

# collective.checkdocs — Distutils command to view and validate restructured text in package's long_description

License: copyleft · Maintenance: abandoned · Downloads: 79.6K/mo

## What it is and what it does

collective.checkdocs is a distutils plugin that adds two commands to your setup.py: checkdocs validates your package's long_description field as reStructuredText and reports syntax errors before publishing, while showdocs renders the description as HTML and serves it locally in a web browser for preview. It was designed to catch formatting errors early and avoid broken package pages on PyPI.

The package has been abandoned since its last release on 2014-06-06 and is not maintained for modern Python or packaging ecosystems. It relies on distutils, which is deprecated. No runtime dependencies are listed, but the high install friction and lack of updates make it a poor fit for contemporary development workflows.

Use it for:

- Validate reStructuredText syntax in a package's long_description before uploading to PyPI to catch formatting errors early.
- Preview how your package's README will render as HTML on PyPI without actually publishing it.
- Integrate documentation validation into a legacy distutils-based build pipeline that has not migrated to modern tools.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Adds distutils commands to validate and preview reStructuredText in a Python package's long_description field before publishing to PyPI.

No. This package is abandoned (last release 2014-06-06) and built on deprecated distutils. Modern alternatives using contemporary build tools are far more reliable and actively maintained. The GPL copyleft license also adds friction for proprietary projects. Install only if you are maintaining legacy code that already depends on it.

## Install

pip install collective-checkdocs
uv add collective-checkdocs
poetry add collective-checkdocs

## Installing collective.checkdocs

Before you install: High install friction: distributed as a .zip file and abandoned since 2014. Last commit was in 2021 but no releases since June 2014. Unlikely to work with modern Python versions or current packaging tooling.

License in practice: Licensed under GPL (copyleft). Use in proprietary projects requires careful license compatibility review; derivative works and distributions must also be GPL.

Quickstart:

pip install collective.checkdocs

Then in your setup.py directory:
python setup.py checkdocs
python setup.py showdocs

Requires distutils; classifiers indicate support only through Python 3.4.

Verify before relying:

- Whether this package works with Python versions beyond those listed in classifiers (2.6, 2.7, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4)
- Whether the showdocs web server on port 6969 still functions or has security implications on modern systems
- Compatibility with modern setuptools and pip given the distutils foundation

## Package facts

- License: GPL (copyleft)
- Python support: unspecified
- Install friction: high
- Maintenance: abandoned
- Downloads: 79.6K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

restructuredtext validation, rest syntax checker, long_description validator, egg documentation checker, pypi readme validator, distutils documentation command, rest to html preview, legacy, distutils-deprecated

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/collective-checkdocs) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/collective-checkdocs/)