7.0.0 release plan

[AA-Turner]

I intend to release Sphinx 7 this weekend (though I'm open to arguments to delay).

This release would be only removing expired deprecations, with new features to go in to 7.1.0, to be released around June. I think generally making releases smaller (in terms of delta from the previous release) and slightly more frequent would help debugging -- e.g. in #11354 it was quite hard to pin-point exactly what caused the issue, and crude bisecting of released versions is a useful debug tool.

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cc: @sphinx-doc/developers

[benjaoming]

@AA-Turner is there a way to list which removals that will take place?

[AA-Turner]

Yep, will be updating CHANGES as usual. If you want the list ahead of time, the majority are enumerated in https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/extdev/deprecated.html (look for a 7.0 removal version).

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[AA-Turner]

The most notable removal for Sphinx 7 is likely support for HTML 4.

[benjaoming]

Thanks @AA-Turner 🙏

[benjaoming]

For testing convenience, could you put up a 7.0b1 release or similar? 🙏

[AA-Turner]

I might release 7.0rc1, but previously we've had very little feedback on pre-releases.

Removal PRs:

• Remove old splitters #11359
• Remove make_old_id functions #11360
• Remove setuptools support #11363
• Remove sphinx.ext.napoleon.iterators #11364
• Remove jsdump #11365
• format_date() deprecation #11366
• Remove deprecated sphinx.util.stemmer module #11370
• Remove deprecated sphinx.pycode.ast.parse() #11371
• Remove deprecated sphinx.io.read_doc() function #11372
• Removed deprecated sphinx.util.get_matching_files() function #11373
• Remove deprecated sphinx.util.docutils.is_html5_writer_available() function #11378
• Make the env argument to Builder subclasses required #11379
• Autosummary: Always emit grouped ImportError exceptions #11380
• Remove deprecated style key for HTML templates #11381
• Remove deprecated LaTeXTranslator.docclasses attribute #11382
• Remove HTMLTranslator and html5_ready from sphinx.builders.html #11383
• Remove HTML 4 support #11385

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[benjaoming]

I might release 7.0rc1, but previously we've had very little feedback on pre-releases.

I remember that 6.0b1 was out very early, which was highly appreciated. This was very helpful since there was some time to build support for the jQuery removal. From a Read the Docs perspective, it's nice to be able to test out a PyPi release in a few build processes. We do get back some attention from users that either haven't pinned an upper bound on Sphinx or simply want the latest version.

If you do a pre-release that works, I will send you back more than crickets ❤️

From a theme/extension perspective, I think it can mean that whoever prioritizes it can bump the Sphinx version dependencies early on. But I guess most maintainers will wait for the stable release before making this effort.

[AA-Turner]

Sounds good -- I will try and release 7.0rc1 this afternoon (UK time).

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[AA-Turner]

Sphinx 7.0.0rc1 has been released.

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cc: @benjaoming

[AA-Turner]

Sphinx 7.0.0 has been released. Thanks to all for your contributions.

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[benjaoming]

I did just manage to get a 7.0.0rc1 build up on RTD that indicates that we have something working 👍 https://test-builds.readthedocs.io/en/sphinx-7.0.x/