sphinx-issues 6.0.0

A Sphinx extension for linking to your project's issue tracker

A Sphinx extension for linking to your project’s issue tracker. Includes roles for linking to issues, pull requests, user profiles, with built-in support for GitHub (though this works with other services).

Example

For an example usage, check out marshmallow’s changelog, which makes use of the roles in this library.

Installation and Configuration

pip install sphinx-issues

Add sphinx_issues to extensions in your conf.py.

The extension has default values for GitHub projects. Add the issues_github_path config variable and you are good to go:

# docs/conf.py

# ...
extensions = [
    # ...
    "sphinx_issues"
]

# Path to GitHub repo {group}/{project}  (note that `group` is the GitHub user or organization)
issues_github_path = "sloria/marshmallow"

# which is the equivalent to:
issues_uri = "https://github.com/{group}/{project}/issues/{issue}"
issues_prefix = "#"
issues_pr_uri = "https://github.com/{group}/{project}/pull/{pr}"
issues_pr_prefix = "#"
issues_commit_uri = "https://github.com/{group}/{project}/commit/{commit}"
issues_commit_prefix = "@"
issues_user_uri = "https://github.com/{user}"
issues_user_prefix = "@"

You can also use this extension with other issue trackers. Here is how you could configure it for a hosted GitLab instance:

# docs/conf.py

# ...
extensions = [
    # ...
    "sphinx_issues"
]

#  Default repo {group}/{project} of gitlab project
issues_default_group_project = "myteam/super_great_project"
issues_uri = "https://gitlab.company.com/{group}/{project}/-/issues/{issue}"
issues_prefix = "#"
issues_pr_uri = "https://gitlab.company.com/{group}/{project}/-/merge_requests/{pr}"
issues_pr_prefix = "!"
issues_commit_uri = "https://gitlab.company.com/{group}/{project}/-/commit/{commit}"
issues_commit_prefix = "@"
issues_user_uri = "https://gitlab.company.com/{user}"
issues_user_prefix = "@"

Usage inside the documentation

Use the :issue: and :pr: roles in your docs like so:

See issue :issue:`42`

See issues :issue:`12,13`

See :issue:`sloria/konch#45`.

See PR :pr:`58`

The :user: role links to user profiles (GitHub by default, but can be configured via the issues_user_uri config variable).

The :commit: role links to commits.

Fixed in :commit:`6bb9124d5e9dbb2f7b52864c3d8af7feb1b69403`.

Thanks to :user:`bitprophet` for the idea!

You can also change the text of the hyperlink:

This change is due to :user:`Andreas Mueller <amueller>`.

The syntax :role:`My custom title <target>` works for all roles of this extension.

Fix bad bug :issue:`123, 199 (Duplicate) <123>`

The :pypi: role links to project pages on PyPI.

:pypi:`sphinx-issues` - A Sphinx extension for linking to your project's issue tracker.

Important note about :cwe: and :cve: roles

The :cwe: and :cve: are included within newer versions of Sphinx. If you use these roles and are using Sphinx<8.1, you will need to install sphinx-issues<5.

Sphinx version support policy

We support the latest released version of Sphinx that is older than 1 year. We unofficially support earlier released versions of Sphinx, but may increase the lower-bound in our dependency pin without warning if needed.

Credits

Credit goes to Jeff Forcier for his work on the releases extension, which is a full-featured solution for generating changelogs. I just needed a quick way to reference GitHub issues in my docs, so I yoinked the bits that I needed.

License

MIT licensed. See the bundled LICENSE file for more details.

Changelog

6.0.0 (2026-03-13)

• Backwards-incompatible: Remove implicit extraction of group/project from GitHub URLs in issues_uri. If you relied on setting _only_ issues_uri (e.g. https://github.com/myuser/myproject/issues/{issue}) without also setting issues_github_path or issues_default_group_project, you must now explicitly set one of those options in your conf.py:

  Before:

  issues_uri = "https://github.com/myuser/myproject/issues/{issue}"

  After:

  issues_github_path = "myuser/myproject"

• Support Python 3.10-3.14. 3.9 is no longer supported, as it is EOL.

• Pin lower bound of Sphinx to 8.1.0 (see “Sphinx version support policy above”).

5.0.1 (2025-04-10)

• Properly handle user and org names with symbols in them (#174). Thanks @ilan-gold for reporting and @flying-sheep for the PR.

5.0.0 (2024-10-11)

• Remove :cwe: and :cve: roles, as these are officially included in Sphinx>=8.1.0.

• Support Python 3.9-3.13. Python 3.8 is no longer supported.

4.1.0 (2024-04-14)

• Add :pypi: role for linking to PyPI projects (#144). Thanks @shenxianpeng for the suggestion and PR.

4.0.0 (2024-01-19)

• Default to linking GH Sponsors for the :user: role (#129). Thanks @webknjaz for the suggestion.

• Support Python 3.8-3.12. Older versions are no longer supported.

• Backwards-incompatible: Remove __version__, __author__, and __license__ attributes. Use importlib.metadata to read this metadata instead.

3.0.1 (2022-01-11)

• Fix regression from 3.0.0: exception: ‘in <string>’ requires string as left operand, not type.

3.0.0 (2022-01-10)

• The :commit: role now outputs with an @ prefix.

• Add configuration options for changing prefixes.

• Allow {group} to be specified within issues_uri, issues_pr_uri, issues_commit_uri, and

2.0.0 (2022-01-01)

• Drop support for Python 2.7 and 3.5.

• Test against Python 3.8 to 3.10.

• Add :cwe: role for linking to CVEs on https://cwe.mitre.org. Thanks @hugovk for the PR.

• Add support for custom urls and separators Issue #93

• Allow custom titles for all roles Issue #116

• Added setting issues_default_group_project as future replacement of issues_github_path, to reflect the now to universal nature of the extension

1.2.0 (2018-12-26)

• Add :commit: role for linking to commits.

• Add support for linking to external repos.

• Test against Python 3.7.

1.1.0 (2018-09-18)

• Add :cve: role for linking to CVEs on https://cve.mitre.org.

1.0.0 (2018-07-14)

• Add :pr: role. Thanks @jnotham for the suggestion.

• Drop support for Python 3.4.

0.4.0 (2017-11-25)

• Raise ValueError if neither issues_uri nor issues_github_path is set. Thanks @jnothman for the PR.

• Drop support for Python 2.6 and 3.3.

0.3.1 (2017-01-16)

• setup returns metadata, preventing warnings about parallel reads and writes. Thanks @jfinkels for reporting.

0.3.0 (2016-10-20)

• Support anchor text for :user: role. Thanks @jnothman for the suggestion and thanks @amueller for the PR.

0.2.0 (2014-12-22)

• Add :user: role for linking to GitHub user profiles.

0.1.0 (2014-12-21)

• Initial release.