diff --git a/buildtools/call-sphinx-build.py b/buildtools/call-sphinx-build.py
index 0dce59f641..26b199220a 100755
--- a/buildtools/call-sphinx-build.py
+++ b/buildtools/call-sphinx-build.py
@@ -9,7 +9,8 @@
 from subprocess import run, PIPE, STDOUT
 from distutils.version import StrictVersion
 
-(sphinx, version, src, dst) = sys.argv[1:]  # assign parameters to variables
+# assign parameters to variables
+(sphinx, version, src, dst, *extra_args) = sys.argv[1:]
 
 # set the version in environment for sphinx to pick up
 os.environ['DPDK_VERSION'] = version
@@ -17,7 +18,7 @@
 # for sphinx version >= 1.7 add parallelism using "-j auto"
 ver = run([sphinx, '--version'], stdout=PIPE,
           stderr=STDOUT).stdout.decode().split()[-1]
-sphinx_cmd = [sphinx]
+sphinx_cmd = [sphinx] + extra_args
 if StrictVersion(ver) >= StrictVersion('1.7'):
     sphinx_cmd += ['-j', 'auto']
 
@@ -29,9 +30,10 @@
 # run sphinx, putting the html output in a "html" directory
 with open(join(dst, 'sphinx_html.out'), 'w') as out:
     process = run(sphinx_cmd + ['-b', 'html', src, join(dst, 'html')],
-                  check=True,
                   stdout=out)
 
 # create a gcc format .d file giving all the dependencies of this doc build
 with open(join(dst, '.html.d'), 'w') as d:
     d.write('html: ' + ' '.join(srcfiles) + '\n')
+
+sys.exit(process.returncode)
diff --git a/doc/guides/meson.build b/doc/guides/meson.build
index daab139c4e..9c35efb5b2 100644
--- a/doc/guides/meson.build
+++ b/doc/guides/meson.build
@@ -7,12 +7,18 @@ if not sphinx.found()
 	subdir_done()
 endif
 
+extra_sphinx_args = []
+if get_option('werror')
+	extra_sphinx_args += '-W'
+endif
+
 htmldir = join_paths(get_option('datadir'), 'doc', 'dpdk')
 html_guides = custom_target('html_guides',
 	input: files('index.rst'),
 	output: 'html',
 	command: [sphinx_wrapper, sphinx, meson.project_version(),
-		meson.current_source_dir(), meson.current_build_dir()],
+		meson.current_source_dir(), meson.current_build_dir(),
+		extra_sphinx_args],
 	depfile: '.html.d',
 	build_by_default: get_option('enable_docs'),
 	install: get_option('enable_docs'),