gh-89554: Document _thread.LockType as a class

[gaborbernat]

_thread.LockType is a class (the type of lock objects), but the documentation marks it with the .. data:: directive, so :class: cross-references to it cannot resolve against a py:class target.

Switch the entry to .. class::.

Refs: gh-89554. Documentation-only change, so no Misc/NEWS entry (skip news).

This file is not covered by CODEOWNERS, so cc @vstinner, who reviews most _thread changes.

[read-the-docs-community]

Documentation build overview

📚 cpython-previews | 🛠️ Build #32943671 | 📁 Comparing 1a8a3a8 against main (2f8f569)

  🔍 Preview build  

5 files changed · ± 5 modified

± Modified

• library/_thread.html
• library/array.html
• reference/import.html
• whatsnew/3.16.html
• whatsnew/changelog.html

[gaborbernat]

Backward-compatibility check. No independent references to _thread.LockType were found in indexed projects. No breakage.

[vstinner]

dir() lists the following methods: ['_at_fork_reinit', 'acquire', 'acquire_lock', 'locked', 'locked_lock', 'release', 'release_lock'].

acquire(), release() and locked can be documented. It means moving the existing documentation to here: https://docs.python.org/dev/library/_thread.html#thread.lock.acquire.

To reduce the diff, maybe move the LockType doc where acquire() is currently documented?

[vstinner]

You should add an indentation of 3 spaces on the methods below, and replace .. method:: lock.xxx(...) with .. method:: xxx(...) (remove the lock. prefix).

[StanFromIreland]

Can these not be avoided by creating labels at the relevant locations?

[gaborbernat]

Not in a way the check accepts, unfortunately. These anchors are object IDs emitted by the .. method:: directive, and they keep the dots (thread.lock.acquire). A reST label or target goes through docutils.nodes.make_id(), which collapses every run of non-alphanumeric characters to a single hyphen, so a label can only ever produce thread-lock-acquire — a different anchor. check-html-ids.py compares exact ID strings, so the dotted thread.lock.acquire would still register as removed.

Since the methods are intentionally moving under LockType, removed-ids.txt is the mechanism for recording that rename.

[StanFromIreland]

Oh right, we could use:

  .. raw:: html
     <span id='thread.lock.acquire'></span>

Like we do elsewhere in the documentation.