Broken documentation URLs

Broken documentation URLs

[Marco Barisione]

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Hello,

Recently, the GDB online documentation was moved from https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/ <https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/> to https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb.html/ <https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb.html/>. As the old address worked for ages (at least a decade!), there are a lot of links on the Internet pointing to some pages under the old URL, which are now broken. The search engines I tested by looking for “gdb.Value” (Google, Kagi and DuckDuckGo) haven’t updated their links either.

Is it possible to set up a redirect?

Thank you!

-- 
Marco Barisione

Re: Broken documentation URLs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Marco Barisione <marco@barisione.org>
> Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2023 13:20:55 +0100
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Recently, the GDB online documentation was moved from https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/ <https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/> to https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb.html/ <https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb.html/>. As the old address worked for ages (at least a decade!), there are a lot of links on the Internet pointing to some pages under the old URL, which are now broken. The search engines I tested by looking for “gdb.Value” (Google, Kagi and DuckDuckGo) haven’t updated their links either.
> 
> Is it possible to set up a redirect?

Mark and the rest of overseers: can this be done, please?

Thanks.

Re: Broken documentation URLs

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

Hi -

> Mark and the rest of overseers: can this be done, please?

Done.

- FChE

Re: Broken documentation URLs

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Eli,

On Fri, 2023-10-13 at 15:55 +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Recently, the GDB online documentation was moved from https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/
> > to https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb.html/

That might have happened by a texinfo update?

> > As the old address worked for ages (at least a decade!),
> > there are a lot of links on the Internet pointing to some pages under the old URL, which are now broken.
> > 
> > The search engines I tested by looking for “gdb.Value” (Google, Kagi and DuckDuckGo) haven’t updated their links either.
> > Is it possible to set up a redirect?
> 
> Mark and the rest of overseers: can this be done, please?

As far as I know the onlinedocs are generated by the gdbadmin
through the /home/gdbadmin/ss/update-web-docs script.
See the /home/gdbadmin/ss/update-web-docs/HOWTO

I think this script would be responsible for creating a symlink or
redirect.

I just don't know what the official procedure is for updating that
script or how it is run (through a cronjob?)

Joel do you know?

Cheers,

Mark

Re: Broken documentation URLs

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi,

Replying to my self, since my and Frank's messages crossed.

On Fri, 2023-10-13 at 15:08 +0200, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> As far as I know the onlinedocs are generated by the gdbadmin
> through the /home/gdbadmin/ss/update-web-docs script.
> See the /home/gdbadmin/ss/update-web-docs/HOWTO
> 
> I think this script would be responsible for creating a symlink or
> redirect.
> 
> I just don't know what the official procedure is for updating that
> script or how it is run (through a cronjob?)
> 
> Joel do you know?

I still like to know how this exactly works. But there is no urgency. 

Frank already fixed the "root cause" by adding an explicit redirect in
the httpd conf.d.

RedirectMatch permanent "/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb(.*)" "/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb.html$1"

So the script doesn't need to be changed.

Cheers,

Mark

Re: Broken documentation URLs

[Marco Barisione]

On 13 Oct 2023, at 14:16, Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 2023-10-13 at 15:08 +0200, Mark Wielaard wrote:
>> As far as I know the onlinedocs are generated by the gdbadmin
>> through the /home/gdbadmin/ss/update-web-docs script.
>> See the /home/gdbadmin/ss/update-web-docs/HOWTO
>> 
>> I think this script would be responsible for creating a symlink or
>> redirect.
>> 
>> I just don't know what the official procedure is for updating that
>> script or how it is run (through a cronjob?)
>> 
>> Joel do you know?
> 
> I still like to know how this exactly works. But there is no urgency. 
> 
> Frank already fixed the "root cause" by adding an explicit redirect in
> the httpd conf.d.
> 
> RedirectMatch permanent "/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb(.*)" "/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb.html$1"
> 
> So the script doesn't need to be changed.

I would like to understand more as well to know which URL is the
canonical one that should be linked from other websites.


-- 
Marco Barisione

Re: Broken documentation URLs

[Joel Brobecker]

> On Fri, 2023-10-13 at 15:08 +0200, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> > As far as I know the onlinedocs are generated by the gdbadmin
> > through the /home/gdbadmin/ss/update-web-docs script.
> > See the /home/gdbadmin/ss/update-web-docs/HOWTO

Correct.

> > I think this script would be responsible for creating a symlink or
> > redirect.
> > 
> > I just don't know what the official procedure is for updating that
> > script or how it is run (through a cronjob?)
> > 
> > Joel do you know?

It's a script inside a (hum) CVS repository. Typically, when I need
to make changes, I simply make them there, and then commit under CVS.

I don't really know why things changed. We're using texinfo provided
by the sourceware system, and according to a comment I inserted in
the script, it was version 6.5, and checking now things haven't change
as it's still version 6.5. The ss scripts themselves haven't changed
either, so it must be something in the binutils-gdb repository.
That would be my guess.

-- 
Joel