How do I include the homepage in the Sphinx TOC?

Is it possible for you to rename your Sphinx project's root toctree page, or, alternatively, the templating/index page? The master_doc variable lets you name the file in your project that contains the root toctree directive, and it doesn't have to be called index.rst... in our documentation project to get around a problem very like this, we have a template/index.html file and our root toctree page is actually called reference.rst.

Turns out the answer was hiding in plain sight on Sphinx’s TOC tree page:

The special entry name self stands for the document containing the toctree directive. This is useful if you want to generate a “sitemap” from the toctree.

Adding self to the TOC tree did the trick perfectly! And if you place it in a separate, hidden toctree directive, it won’t show up on the homepage’s table of contents either:

.. toctree::
   :hidden:

   self


.. toctree::
   :titlesonly:

   installation
   templating/index