Default sphinx role "autolink" appears to be deprecated

[timhoffm]

I noticed that numpy uses a shpinx config setting

numpy/doc/source/conf.py

Line 125 in 05b1210

default_role = "autolink"

This is poor documented at sphinx, but seems to be deprecated:
https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/search.html?q=autolink

and is scheduled for removal in Sphinx 4.0.

[ghost]

Hi Tim,
According to this discussion on scikit-learn, I think it better to change autolink to another value, like any, so default_role can become more useful.

[timhoffm]

I agree that the default role needs changing (if only for the fact that "autolink" seems deprecated). At Matplotlib, we use obj, which is a bit more restrictive than any. Most things we link are other classes/functions. Also trying to catch ref, doc and option seemed a little too ambitious; but YMMV.

Note that when changing to any or obj, you'll get warnings for the current numpydoc style which uses the default role for parameters (see numpy/numpydoc#323). That would have to be addressed one way or the other.