diff --git a/Makefile.sphinx b/Makefile.sphinx
index 139c6f1..937cef7 100644
--- a/Makefile.sphinx
+++ b/Makefile.sphinx
@@ -1,41 +1,49 @@
 # Makefile to be included by other modules, from the TOPLEVEL/docs/ dir, to
 # automatically build sphinx documentation.
 
 APIDOC_DIR = apidoc
 APIDOC_OPTS = --implicit-namespaces
 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))'
 SPHINX_OPTS =
 SPHINX_BUILDDIR = _build
 SPHINX_SRCDIR = .
 
 # relative to docs/ dir. Hence "." exclude the docs/ dir itself
 APIDOC_EXCLUDES =
 APIDOC_EXCLUDES += . ../setup.py
 APIDOC_EXCLUDES += '../swh/*/tests' '../swh/*/tests/*' '../swh/*/*/tests/*' '../swh/*/*/*/tests/*'
 APIDOC_EXCLUDES += '../bin/*'
 APIDOC_EXCLUDES += '../utils/*'
 
 html: sphinx/html
 help: sphinx/help
 
+# allow to skip apidoc generation, for modules where the overall documentation
+# structure, table of contents, etc., is manually curated
+ifeq ($(SKIP_APIDOC),yes)
+apidoc_dep =
+else
+apidoc_dep = apidoc-stamp
+endif
+
 sphinx/clean:
 	$(SPHINXBUILD) -M clean $(SPHINX_SRCDIR) $(SPHINX_BUILDDIR) $(SPHINXOPTS)
-sphinx/%: apidoc-stamp
+sphinx/%: $(apidoc_dep)
 	$(SPHINXBUILD) -M $* $(SPHINX_SRCDIR) $(SPHINX_BUILDDIR) $(SPHINXOPTS)
 
 apidoc: apidoc-stamp
 apidoc-stamp:
 	$(SPHINXAPIDOC) $(APIDOC_OPTS) -o $(APIDOC_DIR) .. $(APIDOC_EXCLUDES)
 	touch $@
 
 .PHONY: clean clean-apidoc
 clean: sphinx/clean clean-apidoc
 clean-apidoc:
 	rm -rf $(APIDOC_DIR)
 	rm -f *-stamp
 
 
 # Local Variables:
 # mode: makefile
 # End: