linklint 0.3.1

A Sphinx extension to remove needless links

Linklint checks .rst files for excessive links to references.

It also can be used as a Sphinx extension to automatically unlink references that should not be links.

Checks

Linklint has two different checks:

• self: find references that link to their own section. For example, in the description of a class, use :class: referring to itself. These should not be links since they will not take you someplace new.

• paradup: find multiple identical references within a single paragraph. The first should be a link, but subsequent references don’t need to be links, they are just distractions.

Sphinx extension

To use linklint as a Sphinx extension, add it to the extensions list in your conf.py file:

extensions = [
    # .. probably other extensions are already here..
    "linklint.ext",
]

During the build process, linklint will run all its checks and unlink any reference it considers excessive.

Command-line use

You can use linklint as a command-line linter:

% linklint --help
usage: linklint [-h] [--check CHECK] [--fix] files [files ...]

positional arguments:
  files          RST files to lint

options:
  -h, --help     show this help message and exit
  --check CHECK  comma-separated checks to run (self, paradup, all)
  --fix          Fix the issues in place

This can be useful to see what linklint considers excessive, or to modify .rst files to unlink excessive references. Linklint unlinks references by changing :func:`foo` to :func:`!foo`.

If you agree with linklint’s decisions, the Sphinx extension is a better option, since it doesn’t require changing the source files, and doesn’t hard-code the decisions.

Changes

v0.3.1 (2026-03-01)

Published to PyPI.

v0.3.0 (2026-02-28)

Methods are associated with classes properly in a number of ways.

The Sphinx extension now displays the number of references that were unlinked. The CPython docs report 3612 references unlinked.

v0.2.0 (2026-02-22)

Now available as a Sphinx extension. Instead of changing .rst source files, the excessive links are automatically unlinked in the generated documentation.

v0.1.0 (2026-02-21)

First version: works as a linter with --check and --fix to change .rst source files.