linklint 0.4.0

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

v0.4.0 (2026-03-10)

A number of roles (:ref:, :doc: and others) were being unlinked when they seemed excessive, but shouldn’t have been. They are explicit references to other parts of the documentation, so should never be removed. This is now fixed.

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.