Griffe Inherited Docstrings

Griffe extension for inheriting docstrings.

Installation

pip install griffe-inherited-docstrings

Usage

With Python:

import griffe

griffe.load("...", extensions=griffe.load_extensions(["griffe_inherited_docstrings"]))

With MkDocs and mkdocstrings:

plugins:
- mkdocstrings:
    handlers:
      python:
        options:
          extensions:
          - griffe_inherited_docstrings

The extension will iterate on every class and their members to set docstrings from parent classes when they are not already defined.

The extension accepts a merge option, that when set to true will actually merge all parent docstrings in the class hierarchy to the child docstring, if any.

plugins:
- mkdocstrings:
    handlers:
      python:
        options:
          extensions:
          - griffe_inherited_docstrings:
              merge: true

class A:
    def method(self):
        """Method in A."""

class B(A):
    def method(self):
        ...

class C(B):
    ...

class D(C):
    def method(self):
        """Method in D."""

class E(D):
    def method(self):
        """Method in E."""

With the code above, docstrings will be merged like following:

Class	Method docstring
A	Method in A.
B	Method in A.
C	Method in A.
D	Method in A. Method in D.
E	Method in A. Method in D. Method in E.

WARNING: Limitation This extension runs once on whole packages. There is no way to toggle merging or simple inheritance for specifc objects.