Methods in child classes can't natively reference inherited methods.

[bwoodsend]

Describe the bug
This is halfway between a bug and a feature request (and probably not of high priority either way). The docstring in a child class can't cross-reference methods/attributes that it inherits using the native :meth:`inherited_method` syntax. Instead it has to use fully qualified referencing :meth:`~ParentClass.inherited_method` .

class Foo:
    def foo(self):
        """A docstring."""
        pass


class Bar(Foo):
    def uses_foo(self):
        """This cross reference to :meth:`foo`won't work.

        A fully qualified reference like :meth:`~Foo.foo` does work but gets
        tedious if the parent class if from another library and therefore needs
        the module name too.
        """
        pass

To Reproduce

I've put the above example, along with its autodoc stubs in an example repo.

git clone https://github.com/bwoodsend/sphinx-reference-issue.git
cd sphinx-reference-issue
pip install -U sphinx
sphinx-build -n docs/source docs/build

The last command should cause a warning about the failed cross-reference.

/.../sphinx-reference-issue/test.py:docstring of test.Bar.uses_foo:1: WARNING: py:meth reference target not found: foo

Expected behavior

I would like the :attr:`attribute` and :meth:`method` to reference the attribute/method from the parent class if that attribute/method has not been overloaded by the child class. i.e In my example above, the cross references in Bar.uses_foo() should both link to Foo.foo().

Environment info

• OS: Linux 5.11.6-1-MANJARO
• Python version: 3.9
• Sphinx version: 3.5.4
• Sphinx extensions: [sphinx.ext.autodoc]
• Extra tools: None

[tk0miya]

Thank you for reporting. At present, it's not supported. The reference :meth:`inherited_method` tries to search Bar.instance_method only. It does not search Foo.instance_method. Please use the "fully qualified referencing" workaround.

Note: This is the same as #272. So I'm closing this as duplicated.