_base_manager and related objects mismatch between docs and implementation

[Josh]

Hello, the docs ​https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/db/managers/#using-managers-for-related-object-access indicate that:

"By default, Django uses an instance of the Model._base_manager manager class when accessing related objects (i.e. choice.question), not the _default_manager on the related object. This is because Django needs to be able to retrieve the related object, even if it would otherwise be filtered out (and hence be inaccessible) by the default manager."

This can be seen not to be the case ​https://github.com/django/django/blob/master/django/db/models/fields/related_descriptors.py#L519

where we can see _base_manager is used for some descriptors (ForwardManyToOneDescriptor, ReverseOneToOneDescriptor) but _default_manager for others (ReverseManyToOneDescriptor, ManyToManyDescriptor)

This seems to be inconsistent, but maybe it is done for a reason. At the very least this inconsistency should be mentioned in the docs.

Cheers!

[Mariusz Felisiak]

It's already clarified ​in the same section:

Base managers aren’t used when querying on related models, or when accessing a one-to-many or many-to-many relationship.