bpo-44756: [docs] revert automated virtual environment creation on `make html` (GH-27635)

It turned out to be disruptive for downstream distributors.

1 files changed, 10 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/Doc/README.rst b/Doc/README.rst
index 20c0432ba1d..7e8a27b4066 100644
--- a/Doc/README.rst
+++ b/Doc/README.rst
@@ -29,13 +29,20 @@ Using make
 ----------
 
 To get started on UNIX, you can create a virtual environment and build
-documentation with the command::
+documentation with the commands::
 
+  make venv
   make html
 
 The virtual environment in the ``venv`` directory will contain all the tools
-necessary to build the documentation.  You can also configure where the virtual
-environment directory will be with the ``VENVDIR`` variable.
+necessary to build the documentation downloaded and installed from PyPI.
+If you'd like to create the virtual environment in a different location,
+you can specify it using the ``VENVDIR`` variable.
+
+You can also skip creating the virtual environment altogether, in which case
+the Makefile will look for instances of ``sphinxbuild`` and ``blurb``
+installed on your process ``PATH`` (configurable with the ``SPHINXBUILD`` and
+``BLURB`` variables).
 
 On Windows, we try to emulate the Makefile as closely as possible with a
 ``make.bat`` file. If you need to specify the Python interpreter to use,