Using sphinx autodoc for a fabfile

Its because you've applied decorator on your function setup_development

you need to update your task function with functools.wraps as below,

from functools import wraps

def task(calling_func):
    @wraps(calling_func)
    def wrapper_func(self, *args, **kw):
        return calling_func(*args, **kw)
    return wrapper_func

If you document decorated functions or methods, keep in mind that autodoc retrieves its docstrings by importing the module and inspecting the __doc__ attribute of the given function or method.

That means that if a decorator replaces the decorated function with another, it must copy the original __doc__ to the new function. From Python 2.5, functools.wraps() can be used to create well-behaved decorating functions.

References:

• Python Sphinx autodoc and decorated members

• https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/extensions/autodoc.html#directive-autoexception