docs: the order of alternatives for variant types matters, and follows the same rules as overload resolution (#2784)

2 files changed, 13 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/docs/advanced/cast/stl.rst b/docs/advanced/cast/stl.rst
index 70fde0d2..b8622ee0 100644
--- a/docs/advanced/cast/stl.rst
+++ b/docs/advanced/cast/stl.rst
@@ -72,6 +72,17 @@ The ``visit_helper`` specialization is not required if your ``name::variant`` pr
 a ``name::visit()`` function. For any other function name, the specialization must be
 included to tell pybind11 how to visit the variant.
 
+.. warning::
+
+    When converting a ``variant`` type, pybind11 follows the same rules as when
+    determining which function overload to call (:ref:`overload_resolution`), and
+    so the same caveats hold. In particular, the order in which the ``variant``'s
+    alternatives are listed is important, since pybind11 will try conversions in
+    this order. This means that, for example, when converting ``variant<int, bool>``,
+    the ``bool`` variant will never be selected, as any Python ``bool`` is already
+    an ``int`` and is convertible to a C++ ``int``. Changing the order of alternatives
+    (and using ``variant<bool, int>``, in this example) provides a solution.
+
 .. note::
 
     pybind11 only supports the modern implementation of ``boost::variant``
diff --git a/docs/advanced/functions.rst b/docs/advanced/functions.rst
index ebdff9c9..55a40a5b 100644
--- a/docs/advanced/functions.rst
+++ b/docs/advanced/functions.rst
@@ -524,6 +524,8 @@ The default behaviour when the tag is unspecified is to allow ``None``.
     not allow ``None`` as argument.  To pass optional argument of these copied types consider
     using ``std::optional<T>``
 
+.. _overload_resolution:
+
 Overload resolution order
 =========================