Code blocks with a way to cross-reference library entities

[cjdb]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I use code-block:: cpp to demonstrate how features in work quite extensively, and it would be beneficial for readers to be able to click on the entities that are mentioned and go to the page that references them (if they're available).

Describe the solution you'd like
The example section of cppreference's std::array page is a good example of what I'd like. Notice that it's possible to click on std::string, which takes you through to the std::string documentation page.

[humitos]

Something like this would work for your use case? https://sphinx-codeautolink.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[picnixz]

@humitos I think the extension you linked is only for Python-like code since it uses an Python AST approach.

[cjdb]

The extension docs also imply that it's Python only (but it is good to know that other people want this enough to write an extension!).

[AA-Turner]

I think this is very reasonable, the challenge would be implementing a lexer to run over code blocks, though likely a lot of the machinery exists already as of the support for object description directives.

Do you happen to know how the C++ reference implement their functionality?

A

[cjdb]

cppreference uses MediaWiki for its backend, and I think this page is how their code blocks are implemented. Something interesting to note is that in

using std::cout; // (1)
cout << x; // (2)

(1) forms a link to std::cout's page, but (2) doesn't, so parsing certainly isn't necessary. That's fine, since I'd even be happy with only the first instance of the name being the link.

std::cout << "Hello, world!\n"; // links
std::cout << "Goodbye, world!\n"; // doesn't link