Be mindful of external references when breaking links

[zoffixznet]

I noticed a commit fixed some links that are 404s and I clearly remembered using those links recently-ish, but I can't remember where exactly. It could've been a blog post, a response on social media, or an email. Regardless of what it was, those links are now broken due to some changes to our site.

We should be more mindful when changing links. If we're to fulfill the Vision for the site, we can't continually break 3rd party communications and content (especially tutorials, blogs, videos, and books).

That point should be made in the contributing guide and some common forms of links should probably be tested (e.g. /type/ and /routine/ links). For example, https://docs.perl6.org/type/Proc$COLON$COLONAsync used to be a working link and I even remember adding .htaccess rewrite rules to keep that form working when we got rid of $COLON stuff in URLs. However, it appears a more recent commit to .htaccess broke those rewrites

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I ran a small Perl 6 one liner over the content of my 2-year old blog and these links turned up as broken:

• https://docs.perl6.org/language/functions#index-entry-nextsame-nextsame
• https://docs.perl6.org/language/functions#index-entry-nextwith-nextwith
• https://docs.perl6.org/language/regexes#%3C%3C_and_%3E%3E_,_left_and_right_word_boundary
• https://docs.perl6.org/syntax/$
• https://docs.perl6.org/syntax/CONTROL
• https://docs.perl6.org/syntax/LEAVE
• https://docs.perl6.org/type/Proc$COLON$COLONAsync

The pages for https://docs.perl6.org/syntax/CONTROL and https://docs.perl6.org/syntax/LEAVE now require a space before the keyword so those two along with the $COLON stuff looks to me like accidental breakage of external links that should've been caught by something IMO.

[JJ]

Hum. That would explain lots of things...

[JJ]

Could this be related to #1835 ?

[JJ]

This is definitely related to this:

https://docs.perl6.org/routine/.$CIRCUMFLEX_ACCENT	
  Line: 158
  Code: 404 Not Found
 To do: The link is broken. Double-check that you have not made any typo,
	or mistake in copy-pasting. If the link points to a resource that
	no longer exists, you may want to remove or fix the link.

[JJ]

And... It might have caused the Great Broken Link Explosion... #561

Pretty much matches the dates...

[JJ]

Could we maybe add a xt test to check for this kind of things?

[JJ]

What is your suggestion in this case? Should we revert the change in .htaccess? Should we try and combine the two to see what happens?

[JJ]

We should also try and have some test files for this.

[coke]

The original breakages are unfortunately long gone at this point.

Going forward, we can do better to not break old links, and the new raku/doc-website will have a link checker available, and hopefully we can also track web server log info and track 404s so we can fix breakages sooner.