upcoming - footer deprecation warning

[janash]

We currently use footer_items in conf.py, but it has a deprecation warning. We will need to update to use footer_start and footer_end.

https://pydata-sphinx-theme.readthedocs.io/en/stable/user_guide/layout.html#footer

[SinaMostafanejad]

Issue

The conf.py "footer_items": [ "molssi_footer" ] field in html_theme_options
dictionary is deprecated in PyData Sphinx Theme and MUST be
replaced with "footer_start": [ "molssi_footer" ] (and maybe "footer_end": [ "" ]) fields as described here.

Expected errors

The aforementioned change raises the following error at build time with sphinx-build

Extension error (pydata_sphinx_theme):
Handler <function update_config at 0x7ff683b89f30> for event 'builder-inited' threw an exception (exception: 'icon_links')
Makefile:53: recipe for target 'html' failed
make: *** [html] Error 2

Possible solutions

This post encourages using the autoapi.sphinx
extension or its variants but none seem to work.

[janash]

Hi @SinaMostafanejad - this error is actually different than the deprecation warning. It has to do with icon_links in conf.py. I believe it is a bug that will probably be fixed in a patch of pydata sphinx theme soon.

Issues on main repo:

• icon_links is required even if empty? pydata/pydata-sphinx-theme#1226
• "icon_links" required in html_theme_options in v0.13.0 pydata/pydata-sphinx-theme#1220

You can fix the error by either downgrading pydata-sphinx-theme, or by adding

    "icon_links": []

to html_theme_options

The footer_items field is actually still working for now.