# Building 3.29.8 on Debian Buster
**URL:** https://discourse.cmake.org/t/building-3-29-8-on-debian-buster/11761
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [September 24, 2024, 10:28pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/building-3-29-8-on-debian-buster/11761 "2024-09-24T22:28:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Soren](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/Soren)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2024, 10:28pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/building-3-29-8-on-debian-buster/11761/1 "2024-09-24T22:28:56Z")
Hi, I recently posted about trying to build latest CMake release. Now I am struggling with building 3.29.8 on Debian Gnu/Linux 10 (Buster) with gcc 8.3.0. I have successfully built the code but the build fails to build the documentation. In my terminal:
~/Build-src/olderCMake/cmake-3.29.8/build$ make documentation/fast
[100%] sphinx-build man: see Utilities/Sphinx/build-man.log
Exception occurred:
File “/home/somian/Build-src/olderCMake/cmake-3.29.8/Utilities/Sphinx/cmake.py”, line 30, in
assert sphinx.version\_info \>= (2,)
AssertionError
The full traceback has been saved in /tmp/sphinx-err-0zahprau.log, if you want to report the issue to the developers
Here’s that log:
# Sphinx version: 1.8.4
# Python version: 3.7.3 (CPython)
# Docutils version: 0.14
# Jinja2 version: 2.10
# Last messages:
# Loaded extensions:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/sphinx/cmd/build.py”, line 303, in build\_main
args.tags, args.verbosity, [args.jobs](http://args.jobs), args.keep\_going)
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/sphinx/application.py”, line 228, in **init**
self.setup\_extension(extension)
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/sphinx/application.py”, line 449, in setup\_extension
self.registry.load\_extension(self, extname)
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/sphinx/registry.py”, line 472, in load\_extension
mod = **import** (extname, None, None, [‘setup’])
File “/home/somian/Build-src/olderCMake/cmake-3.29.8/Utilities/Sphinx/cmake.py”, line 30, in
assert sphinx.version\_info \>= (2,)
AssertionError
It appears that a version (1.8.4) of sphinx is “bundled” with the CMake source distribution and that the build apparatus just ignores a newer version of Sphinx installed on the system (which I did). Can anyone familiar with the big pictures confirm or disprove this?
No matter what the reply, thank you for you valuable time & attention,
Soren A
---
### Author:  [@brad.king](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/brad.king)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2024, 11:17am UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/building-3-29-8-on-debian-buster/11761/2 "2024-09-25T11:17:15Z")
> [@Soren](#):
>
> It appears that a version (1.8.4) of sphinx is “bundled” with the CMake source distribution
We don’t bundle Sphinx itself, but we do have our own Sphinx extension that requires Sphinx 2 or higher.
Debian Buster packages Sphinx 1.8.4:
```console
$ docker run -it --rm --platform linux/i386 debian:buster bash -c 'apt-get update && apt-cache policy python3-sphinx'
...
python3-sphinx:
Installed: (none)
Candidate: 1.8.4-1
Version table:
1.8.4-1 500
500 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster/main i386 Packages
```
---
### Author:  [@Soren](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/Soren)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2024, 1:12am UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/building-3-29-8-on-debian-buster/11761/3 "2024-09-30T01:12:17Z")
Ok, thanks. I see. But I did install a new version of Sphinx, although I did not need to do
> [@brad.king](#):
>
> `bash -c 'apt-get update && apt-cache policy python3-sphinx'`
This may be a reason it does not work - maybe the sphinx I installed did not really install correctly.