Optionally emit page links with “.html” for static file servers that don’t support implicit extensions when routing

[pettiross]

I copied my dist folder to a basic web server. The index file loaded, but the links to pages like Observable GitHub fail to load because the URL specified was just to /github instead of /github.html.

[mbostock]

This is intentional behavior to produce “clean URLs”, and is what we want by default. This means that you need to use a static file server that supports clean URLs, such as http-server, GitHub Pages, Netlify, etc. Most hosting sites so this automatically. If we want to generate “non-clean” URLs, it should be opt-in through a configuration option.

[pettiross]

Ah, that's how long it's been since I've been habitually running my own dev web server. I switched from httpd to http-server and works for me now; thanks for the pointer. (I tried adding the appropriate option to httpd.conf and I still wasn't getting it to work, but I'm chalking that up to user error.)

[mbostock]

There should definitely be an option for emitting .html, and I think perhaps even this should be the default behavior because it works universally. Even http-server doesn’t handle serving /javascript correctly, for example. #171

[Fil]

related #69