Increase minimum supported Sphinx to 6.2.1

[hugovk]

Documentation

Python 3.11 is now only receiving security updates, so it's time to review the minimum Sphinx version user for 3.12+. We won't change the minimum for the 3.11 branch.

Using the same survey as #109209 (comment):

Distro	CPython	Sphinx
Debian 12 Bookworm	3.11.2	5.3.0
Debian 13 Trixie (testing)	3.11.6	7.2.6
Debian Sid (unstable)	3.11.8	7.2.6
Debian (experimental)	3.12.1	n/a
Fedora 39	3.12.2	6.2.1
Fedora 40	3.12.2	7.2.6
Fedora rawhide	3.12.3	7.2.6
Gentoo	n/a	n/a
openSUSE Leap		7.2.6
openSUSE Tumbleweed		7.2.6
RHEL	n/a	n/a
Minimum Sphinx version for 3.12	3.12	6.2.1

References:

• https://packages.debian.org/sid/python3
• https://packages.debian.org/sid/python3-sphinx
• https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/python3.12/python3/
• https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/python-sphinx/python3-sphinx/
• https://software.opensuse.org/package/python-Sphinx

cc:

• @mitya57 / Debian

• @hroncok / Fedora / RHEL

• @mgorny / Gentoo

• @danigm / openSUSE

• @AA-Turner / CPython

• gh-117928: Bump the minimum Sphinx version to 6.2.1 #117853

Linked PRs

• [3.12] gh-117928: Bump the minimum Sphinx version to 6.2.1 (GH-117853) #118321
• GH-117928: Bump the minimum Sphinx version to 6.2.1 #121986
• [3.12] GH-117928: Bump the minimum Sphinx version to 6.2.1 (GH-121986) #121993
• [3.13] GH-117928: Bump the minimum Sphinx version to 6.2.1 (GH-121986) #121994

[hroncok]

cc @befeleme / Fedora / RHEL

[hroncok]

Fedora: 6.2.1 is good enough for 3.12+

[danigm]

For openSUSE we're using right now:

• Sphinx 7.2.6 to build cpython in Tumbleweed
• Sphinx 4.2.0 to build cpython in Leap

cc @mcepl

[hugovk]

What Python version do you have in Leap? Is it still 3.6 as a base, and you can install newer versions as additional modules?

When do you plan to upgrade Sphinx in Leap?

Sphinx 4.2.0 is ~3 years old: https://pypi.org/project/Sphinx/4.2.0/

[danigm]

What Python version do you have in Leap? Is it still 3.6 as a base, and you can install newer versions as additional modules?

When do you plan to upgrade Sphinx in Leap?

Sphinx 4.2.0 is ~3 years old: https://pypi.org/project/Sphinx/4.2.0/

We've also python 3.11 in Leap, right now it's building using sphinx-build provided by Sphinx 4.2.0, using the python 3.6 interpreter, but we've also the 3.11 version, that's 7.2.6. So for future releases we can just use this modern version of Sphinx to build the python interpreter documentation.

So in this specific case, you can forget about the old 4.2.0 version and it should be okay to set the minimum supported Sphinx to 6.2.1. Shouldn't be a problem in openSUSE.

[hugovk]

Thanks, sounds good, and we'll keep Sphinx 4.2.0 for the 3.11 branch.