DOC: 404 Error when trying to switch doc versions from 1.4.4 version page

[DominikBerger01]

Pandas version checks

• I have checked that the issue still exists on the latest versions of the docs on main here

Location of the documentation

https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/index.html#api

Documentation problem

When trying to change from documentation version 1.4.4 back to any other version.
Get 404 error. Played around and only found this issue when trying to switch other versions from 1.4.4 documentation page

Suggested fix for documentation

Revise linking.

[lithomas1]

Thanks for the report.

cc @datapythonista
(Any idea if there's an issue with a missing link/redirect or something on the web server?

IMO, it feels kind of weird that the navbar is part of the built docs, and changes based on the version of the docs you're looking at.)

[wcgonzal]

Also, to add, from my end, the option to switch to another version disappears. I'm assuming that's not supposed to happen?

[datapythonista]

The documentation for old versions was generated during the release and never updated after that. The pydata sphinx theme changed how the version switcher goes, and since the versions.json file is global for old versions (as it needs to be updated for all with nee versions), not sure if there is much we can do.

Can't check myself right now, but two ideas:

• Use absolute paths for the links to the versions in versions.json, that may work
• Maintain two versions of versions.jsons (make a copy and use it for future releases)

[DominikBerger01]

I'll look into this and propose a solution within the next days.
Regards,
Dominik

[DominikBerger01]

take

[DominikBerger01]

The documentation for old versions was generated during the release and never updated after that. The pydata sphinx theme changed how the version switcher goes, and since the versions.json file is global for old versions (as it needs to be updated for all with nee versions), not sure if there is much we can do.

Can't check myself right now, but two ideas:

• Use absolute paths for the links to the versions in versions.json, that may work
• Maintain two versions of versions.jsons (make a copy and use it for future releases)

After looking into this, I came to the same conclusion what causes the issue as @datapythonista.
The different versions of the docs are pretty much created in isolation upon release. So in order to update them they would need to be regenerated.

Each of them has their own html structure. (no shared navbar, footer etc.) This also leads to the copyright notice in the footer being outdated for older versions.

Obviously there are a couple of solutions here but the in my opinion cleanest and most future-proof would be to have one shared header and footer and regenerate the docs for older versions to also use the shared components. As like in any other web-application :)

What do you guys think?

I'd like to note I have seen the same in other popular libraries such as requests and also this is only relevant if the header won't change much because it could cause linking issues in the old docs and they would again have to be regenerated.

So maybe do nothing is best here and declare it as feature? Because if looking at the old versions as a snapshot function it would make sense for them to be completely isolated and not meant to be changed or influenced by changes from future versions.

[DominikBerger01]

Will close this issue as not planned. Welcome to reopen if it should become a priority to fix in the future.