do linkchecks for changelog lint

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

#1721 showed that we don't check those and mistakes happen, #1720 related

[nicoddemus]

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to do this? I took a look at rst-lint we use and it does not have that option.

[The-Compiler]

LinkChecker maybe? Hopefully it also runs locally over the generated HTML files.

If we do this with Travis we probably shouldn't do it on every push though.

[nicoddemus]

Hmm sounds good. Why do you say we shouldn't do it on every push? So people's PRs are not blocked if some unrelated link is broken?

Python 3 is not yet supported.

Sad panda is sad.

[The-Compiler]

No, because it's not very nice to do dozens (hundreds?) of HTTP request with every push 😉 I guess we could use Travis' cron feature?

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

should we make it part of the pre-release process?

[nicoddemus]

No, because it's not very nice to do dozens (hundreds?) of HTTP request with every push 😉

Heh, right. 😝

should we make it part of the pre-release process?

Good idea. A simple environment on tox that should be part of the release process sounds good, executed locally.

[adamtheturtle]

In case it saves you a few minutes, https://github.com/jenca-cloud/jenca-authentication/blob/master/.travis.yml#L16 is a .travis.yml which only installs and runs linkchecker on Python 3 builds.

[nicoddemus]

Thanks @adamtheturtle!

[The-Compiler]

Seems like Sphinx also has a linkcheck builder built-in.

[Zac-HD]

An easy contribution would be to run the Sphinx linkcheck builder from release.py, after the fix_formatting() step.

[mandarvaze]

Anyone working on this ? I would like to work on this.

I'm a first time contributor, and may require a bit of help, especially how to test the change etc. (Relevant code snippet and possible solution already provided by @Zac-HD - Thanks.)

[blueyed]

Anyone working on this ? I would like to work on this.

I don't think anyone is working on it.. go ahead :)

[mandarvaze]

@Zac-HD

I'm assuming once broken links are reported, someone needs to fix those (There seem to be a lot, right now when I was testing my changes)

I'm thinking of the following :

diff --git a/tox.ini b/tox.ini
index 7e5b182f6..129dabb96 100644
--- a/tox.ini
+++ b/tox.ini
@@ -66,6 +66,7 @@ changedir = doc/en
 deps = -r{toxinidir}/doc/en/requirements.txt

 commands =
+    sphinx-build -b linkcheck . _build
     sphinx-build -W -b html . _build

 [testenv:doctesting]

This will be called when building documentation locally, and provides opportunity to fix the broken links (if they choose)

Downsides :

1. Local build will take additional time (unnecessary ?)
2. Since I don't know how often is the tox -e docs command used, I'm worried that as @The-Compiler said, we might be generating too many (unnecessary) requests.

Please suggest.

[blueyed]

I think a separate toxenv would be good, which could inject args into the existing one using a tox env (see related hacks there already), e.g.

setenv =
  checklinks: _TOX_PYTEST_SPHINX_ARGS=-b linkcheck

Then running tox -e docs-checklinks would set the env var, that would be used in the command.

Not sure about if that should run on CI always - quite unnecessary, especially with non-doc changes.

[Zac-HD]

Probably not a good idea to run too often, as a linkcheck is inherently flaky (due to transient network issues, timeouts, etc).

Ideally we'd have a new tox env that just does the linkcheck, which can be run before making a release. And add this to the release checklist!

[mandarvaze]

Ideally we'd have a new tox env that just does the linkcheck, which can be run before making a release.

Understood. I can do what @blueyed suggested.

And add this to the release checklist!

Do you mean update HOWTORELEASE.rst ?
or
call it from release.py as you suggested above ?

[nicoddemus]

@mandarvaze just call it from release.py should be fine. 👍

[steffenschroeder]

started to working on this during EuroPython2019 sprint. (with the help of @The-Compiler)
Will open 2 PRs:

1. for the broken links (sphinx-build's linkcheck only reports one error at a time so it takes some time)
2. for adding tox and and release.py

[steffenschroeder]

Is https://docs.pytest.org/en/latest/adopt.html (April 2015 is "adopt pytest month") still needed? It is still in the repo and contains a broken link (to google forms). Can this be deleted? If not, what can I with the link?

[The-Compiler]

@steffenschroeder I'd keep it around - it's nice to know it was a thing that happened, and we should probably do that again some day! Which of the links is broken? The two form links I see there seem to work fine. I'd probably just remove the link and maybe strike through the text or so.

[steffenschroeder]

@The-Compiler the Partner projects, sign up here! is broken an can probably be removed (or strike through).
The assert, markers and distributed links could be changed to proper locations. Will do so.

[The-Compiler]

@steffenschroeder Odd, that link seems to be okay - it leads to a The form "Request a helper for your open source project, for "adopt pytest month"" is no longer accepting responses.-page, but that's not a 404 or anything, so I wonder why linkcheck complains about it. Either way, seems fine to remove the text.

[steffenschroeder]

@The-Compiler although the link works in the browser, checklinks will report it as an error. So I have 2 options:

1. remove the link
2. add it to a whitelist as false positive

For this particular case, I removed it.

[steffenschroeder]

#5614 will add link checking for all links in the documentation.
The check will only be done locally during the release process (release.py)

#5613 will correct all broken links the linkchecker found.