sphinx-apidoc on namespaces with only subpackages/namespaces

[l-spiecker]

Describe the bug
--implicit-namespaces allows us to use namespaces in our project tree. At the current deployed implementation (3.4.3) it makes a difference if i have a submodule in my module_path (root python namespace) or only subpackages/namespaces.

Running sphinx-apidoc --implicit-namespaces module_path with a submodule (some python file) it will choose the module_path as the one and only module otherwise, without a submodule, it will use the subpackages/namespaces as individual python modules.

The difference in the output is, that the module.rst of the module_path is not created and modules.rst does contain all subpackages/namespaces as submodules and not only the root module.

I would recommend to introduce an option to not search recursively for modules, or disable the recursive search if implicit-namespaces are activated.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

Create a directory with name 'module' with subdirectories, add python files to the subdirectories.
Run: sphinx-apidoc --implicit-namespaces -o apidoc_out1 ./module
Now add a python file into 'module'.
Run: sphinx-apidoc --implicit-namespaces -o apidoc_out2 ./module
Compare the results.

Expected behavior
Expecting same result in apidoc_out2, with only one added module inside module.rst. Instead module.rst is missing and modules.rst is different.

Your project
sphinx-apidoc-bug.zip

Environment info

• OS: Win
• Python version: 3.8.0
• Sphinx version: 3.4.3