From: Miss Islington (bot) <31488909+miss-islington@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2025 09:18:27 +0000 (+0200)
Subject: [3.13] gh-132346: Docs: Clarify that reference counts aren't stable between versions... 
X-Git-Tag: v3.13.6~88
X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=fac28e47910ac2debcfe994b02a38b68a28b3eb5;p=thirdparty%2FPython%2Fcpython.git

[3.13] gh-132346: Docs: Clarify that reference counts aren't stable between versions (GH-132352) (GH-136614)

gh-132346: Docs: Clarify that reference counts aren't stable between versions (GH-132352)
(cherry picked from commit 3dbe02ccd3eefc48ac9fa14427bb4cdb82d1ebae)

Co-authored-by: Peter Bierma <zintensitydev@gmail.com>
---

diff --git a/Doc/glossary.rst b/Doc/glossary.rst
index 118d4fbe30fd..9e44b156e733 100644
--- a/Doc/glossary.rst
+++ b/Doc/glossary.rst
@@ -1163,6 +1163,11 @@ Glossary
       :func:`sys.getrefcount` function to return the
       reference count for a particular object.
 
+      In :term:`CPython`, reference counts are not considered to be stable
+      or well-defined values; the number of references to an object, and how
+      that number is affected by Python code, may be different between
+      versions.
+
    regular package
       A traditional :term:`package`, such as a directory containing an
       ``__init__.py`` file.