threading.Thread: documentation says group "should be None", but implementation enforces it with AssertionError

[My-ABC]

Bug report

Bug description:

Bug report

Bug description:

The documentation for threading.Thread states that the group parameter "should be None". However, the actual implementation uses assert group is None and raises AssertionError if a non-None value is passed.

Reproduction:

import threading
threading.Thread(1)  # any non-None value

CPython versions tested on:

3.14

Operating systems tested on:

Windows

Linked PRs

• gh-150232: Change Thread group parameter doc from 'should be' to 'must be' #150238
• gh-150232: Change Thread group parameter doc from 'should be' to 'must be' #150243

[picnixz]

What is the issue actually? is it because of the assertion that is silently removed with -O?

[picnixz]

I did not look at the history but I guess the reason was because of some Python 2/3 changes (or it was allowed to be non-None for some extensions in the future but we did not made any)

[picnixz]

Oh you mean we should change the docs to "must be None" instead maybe?

[My-ABC]

Thanks for taking a look!

Yes, exactly — the issue is that the documentation currently says group "should be None", but the implementation uses assert group is None, which makes it mandatory. I'm suggesting we update the documentation to say "must be None" to reflect the actual behavior.

Let me know if I should go ahead and submit a PR for the documentation change.

[My-ABC]

This is a trivial documentation change (one word changed). Could a maintainer please add the skip news label?

Thank you!