[Bioc-devel] Short URLs for packages?

----- Original Message -----

From: "Robert Castelo"<robert.castelo at upf.edu>
To: "Dan Tenenbaum"<dtenenba at fredhutch.org>
Cc: bioc-devel at r-project.org
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2015 12:57:36 AM
Subject: Re: [Bioc-devel] Short URLs for packages?

hi Dan,

one question about this, just to know whether this is intentional or
should be fixed. i have noticed that these short URLs:

www.bioconductor.org/packages/BiocGenerics

or

bioconductor.org/packages/BiocGenerics

resolve to

http://master.bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/BiocGenerics.html

while the page is correct, should not they be resolving to an URL
starting with 'www' instead of 'master'? i.e.,

www.bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/BiocGenerics.html


this is really minor, but i think it may create confusion when one
sees
the same page starting with 'www' or 'master'.

'www' is just an alias, typically any url starting with www should redirect to plain old bioconductor.org.
I've fixed the redirects so they no longer redirect to master. So


  www.bioconductor.org/packages/BiocGenerics

  or

  bioconductor.org/packages/BiocGenerics

  resolves to

  http://bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/BiocGenerics.html

Dan

cheers,

robert.

On 04/28/2015 08:08 PM, Dan Tenenbaum wrote:

----- Original Message -----

From: "Wolfgang Huber"<whuber at embl.de>  To:
bioc-devel at r-project.org Sent: Monday, March 23, 2015 3:17:03 AM
Subject: [Bioc-devel] Short URLs for packages?

I wonder whether it?d possible to have the website understand URLs
like http://www.bioconductor.org/<pkgname>

This could resolve to
http://www.bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/<pkgname>.html

or

http://www.bioconductor.org/packages/devel/bioc/html/<pkgname>.html

depending on whether the package was yet released.

This could be handy in papers or grants that mention packages.

We came up with something close to this, but it does include the
/packages/ segment because we think that's important.


http://bioconductor.org/packages/BiocGenerics/

- takes you to the release landing page, unless the package is only
in devel, in which case it takes you to the devel landing page
(which
will contain suitable warnings/instructions about installing the
devel version).

You can also specify 'devel' or 'release' or a numbered
Bioconductor
version:

http://bioconductor.org/packages/devel/BiocGenerics/
http://bioconductor.org/packages/release/BiocGenerics/
http://bioconductor.org/packages/3.2/BiocGenerics/
http://bioconductor.org/packages/3.1/BiocGenerics/
http://bioconductor.org/packages/3.0/BiocGenerics/ ...

(The trailing slashes are optional in all of these).

These are redirects and not forwards; that is, if you enter one of
these short URLs, it won't remain in your browser's address bar but
will change to one of the longer URLs. So they are sort of
ephemeral
in this way.

We looked into doing these as forwards (i.e., short URL remains in
address bar, but content from 'long' URL is served), which seems
more
useful, but there were too many problems with that; it breaks
relative URLs and more importantly it breaks our mirrors which do
not
necessarily have the same content root as our web site.

At any rate, the short URLs can be used in publications and other
sites, and they are useful as a permanent link to the current
release
version of a package. We have added information about these short
URLs to the emails we send to new package developers, so that they
can use them in publications that reference their packages.

Thanks, Dan

Wolfgang


---- Wolfgang Huber Principal Investigator, EMBL Senior Scientist
Genome Biology Unit European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)
Heidelberg, Germany

T +49-6221-3878823 wolfgang.huber at embl.de http://www.huber.embl.de

--
Robert Castelo, PhD
Associate Professor
Dept. of Experimental and Health Sciences
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)
Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB)
Dr Aiguader 88
E-08003 Barcelona, Spain
telf: +34.933.160.514
fax: +34.933.160.550