Shadowing `version` in `conf.py` with an `import` causes an error in intersphinx

[JannisNe]

Describe the bug

While building the documentation sphinx errors with a TypeError. It looks like it is trying to parse a string with re that is not properly converted to str before.

# Platform:         darwin; (macOS-15.3.2-arm64-arm-64bit)
# Sphinx version:   7.3.7
# Python version:   3.10.9 (CPython)
# Docutils version: 0.18.1
# Jinja2 version:   3.1.2
# Pygments version: 2.16.1

# Last messages:
#   dumping object inventory...
#   failed
#   [app] emitting event: 'build-finished'(TypeError('expected string or bytes-like object'),)
#   
#   ====================== slowest reading durations =======================
#   0.280 api
#   0.246 generated/timewise.wise_bigdata_desy_cluster.WISEDataDESYCluster
#   0.142 generated/timewise.wise_data_by_visit.WiseDataByVisit
#   0.129 generated/timewise.wise_data_base.WISEDataBase
#   0.022 generated/timewise.parent_sample_base.ParentSampleBase

# Loaded extensions:
#   sphinx.ext.mathjax (7.3.7)
#   alabaster (0.7.16)
#   sphinxcontrib.applehelp (1.0.4)
#   sphinxcontrib.devhelp (1.0.2)
#   sphinxcontrib.htmlhelp (2.0.1)
#   sphinxcontrib.serializinghtml (2.0.0)
#   sphinxcontrib.qthelp (1.0.3)
#   sphinx.ext.duration (7.3.7)
#   sphinx.ext.doctest (7.3.7)
#   sphinx.ext.autodoc.preserve_defaults (7.3.7)
#   sphinx.ext.autodoc.type_comment (7.3.7)
#   sphinx.ext.autodoc.typehints (7.3.7)
#   sphinx.ext.autodoc (7.3.7)
#   sphinx.ext.autosummary (7.3.7)
#   sphinx.ext.viewcode (7.3.7)
#   myst_parser (2.0.0)

# Traceback:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/jannisnecker/opt/miniconda3/envs/timewise/lib/python3.10/site-packages/sphinx/cmd/build.py", line 337, in build_main
    app.build(args.force_all, args.filenames)
  File "/Users/jannisnecker/opt/miniconda3/envs/timewise/lib/python3.10/site-packages/sphinx/application.py", line 349, in build
    self.builder.build_specific(filenames)
  File "/Users/jannisnecker/opt/miniconda3/envs/timewise/lib/python3.10/site-packages/sphinx/builders/__init__.py", line 281, in build_specific
    self.build(docnames, method='specific',
  File "/Users/jannisnecker/opt/miniconda3/envs/timewise/lib/python3.10/site-packages/sphinx/builders/__init__.py", line 365, in build
    self.finish()
  File "/Users/jannisnecker/opt/miniconda3/envs/timewise/lib/python3.10/site-packages/sphinx/builders/html/__init__.py", line 682, in finish
    self.handle_finish()
  File "/Users/jannisnecker/opt/miniconda3/envs/timewise/lib/python3.10/site-packages/sphinx/builders/html/__init__.py", line 1152, in handle_finish
    self.finish_tasks.add_task(self.dump_inventory)
  File "/Users/jannisnecker/opt/miniconda3/envs/timewise/lib/python3.10/site-packages/sphinx/util/parallel.py", line 41, in add_task
    res = task_func()
  File "/Users/jannisnecker/opt/miniconda3/envs/timewise/lib/python3.10/site-packages/sphinx/util/display.py", line 93, in wrapper
    return f(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/Users/jannisnecker/opt/miniconda3/envs/timewise/lib/python3.10/site-packages/sphinx/builders/html/__init__.py", line 1156, in dump_inventory
    InventoryFile.dump(path.join(self.outdir, INVENTORY_FILENAME), self.env, self)
  File "/Users/jannisnecker/opt/miniconda3/envs/timewise/lib/python3.10/site-packages/sphinx/util/inventory.py", line 171, in dump
    escape(env.config.version))).encode())
  File "/Users/jannisnecker/opt/miniconda3/envs/timewise/lib/python3.10/site-packages/sphinx/util/inventory.py", line 162, in escape
    return re.sub("\\s+", " ", string)
  File "/Users/jannisnecker/opt/miniconda3/envs/timewise/lib/python3.10/re.py", line 209, in sub
    return _compile(pattern, flags).sub(repl, string, count)
TypeError: expected string or bytes-like object

How to Reproduce

Unfortunately, I can not tell which part of the documentation is trying to be parsed so I do not know how to make a minimal example. I can only reference my package:

git clone https://github.com/JannisNe/timewise.git
cd timewise
python -m sphinx docs/source -T -b html -d _build/doctrees -D language=en . ./html -c docs/source/

Environment Information

Platform:              darwin; (macOS-15.3.2-arm64-arm-64bit)
Python version:        3.10.9 | packaged by conda-forge | (main, Feb  2 2023, 20:26:08) [Clang 14.0.6 ])
Python implementation: CPython
Sphinx version:        7.3.7
Docutils version:      0.18.1
Jinja2 version:        3.1.2
Pygments version:      2.16.1

Sphinx extensions

Additional context

No response

[JannisNe]

It turnes out that this is an issue related to importlib.metadata.version. I wanted to get the version of the package dynamically in conf.py:

from importlib.metadat import version

release = f"v{version('timewise')}"

This caused the error above. Even just importing the version function even causes the error.

The obvious solution is to hardcode the release, so feel free to close this issue if this is not something considered sphinx related.

[picnixz]

It's a legitimate bug. Actually, by doing from importlib.metadata import version, we create a version globals in conf.py. However version is also a legitimate configuration option. And because of that... we end up trying to use it in intersphinx:

            f.write(
                (
                    '# Sphinx inventory version 2\n'
                    f'# Project: {escape(env.config.project)}\n'
                    f'# Version: {escape(env.config.version)}\n'
                    '# The remainder of this file is compressed using zlib.\n'
                ).encode()
            )

Here, the problem is that env.config.version is actually importlib.metadata.version which is... a function. Thanks for the report.

[picnixz]

This is a bit annoying to fix because we should still support legacy configurations. One way I can think of is the following:

• If version is not a string and release exists, assume that version is not a real configuration value and fallback to release.
• If version is not a string and release does not exist either, use a default value instead (maybe?) Something else?