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Recursion error: maximum recursion depth exceeded in comparison#

Symptoms#

Sphinx build failed with error:

Recursion error: maximum recursion depth exceeded in comparison

This can happen with very large or deeply nested source files. You can
carefully increase the default Python recursion limit of 1000 in conf.py
with e.g.: import sys; sys.setrecursionlimit(1500)

Reasons#

This rare issue usually occurs by human error. The common cause is creating circle reference between documents in a toctree:: directives.

Example#

For example toctree:: in index.rst include second.rst, and vise versa, second.rst includes index.rst. This creates circular reference that will quickly exhause Python recursion limit when Sphinx analyses documents.

index.rst:

First
=====

.. toctree::

   second

second.rst:

Second
======

.. toctree::

   index

Solution#

Fix circular reference in toctrees. In previous example, second.rst refer to index by error.