diff --git a/Makefile.sphinx b/Makefile.sphinx
--- a/Makefile.sphinx
+++ b/Makefile.sphinx
@@ -3,8 +3,8 @@
 
 APIDOC_DIR = apidoc
 APIDOC_OPTS = --ext-viewcode --separate
-SPHINXBUILD = python3 -c 'import sphinx, sys; sys.exit(sphinx.main(sys.argv))'
-SPHINXAPIDOC = python3 -c 'import sphinx.apidoc, sys; sys.exit(sphinx.apidoc.main(sys.argv))'
+SPHINXBUILD = sphinx-build
+SPHINXAPIDOC = sphinx-apidoc
 SPHINX_OPTS =
 SPHINX_BUILDDIR = _build
 SPHINX_SRCDIR = .
diff --git a/docs/Makefile b/docs/Makefile
--- a/docs/Makefile
+++ b/docs/Makefile
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 SPHINXOPTS ?=
-SPHINXBUILD = python3 -c 'import sphinx, sys; sys.exit(sphinx.main(sys.argv))'
+SPHINXBUILD = sphinx-build
 SOURCEDIR = .
 BUILDDIR = _build
 HTMLDIR = $(BUILDDIR)/html
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 # should match https://pypi.python.org/pypi names. For the full spec or
 # dependency lines, see https://pip.readthedocs.org/en/1.1/requirements.html
 vcversioner
-sphinx >= 1.3, < 2
+sphinx
 sphinxcontrib-httpdomain
 sphinxcontrib-images
 sphinxcontrib-programoutput