CPython’s C-level docstrings contain malformed RST markup

[timosachsenberg]

Bug report

When building the documentation for pyOpenMS (after switching from Cython to nanobind) we ran into issues with Sphinx. I put here the analysis from an agent. Would be great if you could confirm if this should be fixed in nanobind or CPython.
Enums created with nb::is_arithmetic() inherit from Python’s int, which exposes methods like from_bytes() and to_bytes() on every enum type. These inherited methods carry CPython’s C-level docstrings, which contain malformed RST markup - specifically, backtick-apostrophe patterns like sys.byteorder' instead of sys.byteorder`.
When Sphinx autodoc processes these enums, it emits dozens of warnings:
WARNING: Inline interpreted text or phrase reference start-string without end-string [docutils]

Bug description:

see wjakob/nanobind#1317

CPython versions tested on:

3.14, 3.12, 3.10, 3.11, 3.13

Operating systems tested on:

Linux

[hugovk]

Please can you update the description to be a self-contained report?

[serhiy-storchaka]

In general, docstrings do not contain RST markup -- they are plain text. So, this is an issue of Sphinx or it's configuration -- perhaps you can disable interpreting docstrings as reStruredText.

BTW, I do not see any backticks in the int method docstrings.

[hugovk]

When Sphinx autodoc processes these enums, it emits dozens of warnings:
WARNING: Inline interpreted text or phrase reference start-string without end-string [docutils]

Does it give a filename? Please can you post the full error log?

CPython versions tested on:

3.14, 3.12, 3.10, 3.11, 3.13

Which exact Python versions are you using?

What command are you running, on what files?

Can you make a minimal reproducer?

[encukou]

This was fixed in #117847, in Python 3.13.

CPython's docstrings aren't (necessarily) ReST, but also, PEP-287 is Active. I'm not sure how to interpret it these days, but I'd argue CPython's docstrings should be either plain plain text or ReST.