What is the READTHEDOCS environment variable for?

[NikosAlexandris]

At https://github.com/dimartinot/gee_sar_fetcher/blob/dev/geesarfetcher/__init__.py#L23-L24,
what is this variable meant for?

[dimartinot]

I build the official documentation of the app using READTHEDOCS (you can access it at this address: https://gee-sar-fetcher.readthedocs.io/en/latest/?badge=latest ).

This documentation process calls the different Python files of the app and then executes any code within these files, including this ee.Initialize() line, that is only expected to be called when the library is imported. To prevent this from being called when reathedocs builds documentation, I just check wether an env variable is set or not. The presence of the READTHEDOCS variable is used to make the check.

Hope I was understandable enough :) !