New URL redirect checks
I can't comment for CRAN, but generally, shorteners are considered security risk so regardless of the 301 handling I think flagging those is a good idea. Also I think it is particularly bad to use them in manuals because it hides the target so the user has no idea what hey will get. Cheers, Simon
On Sep 17, 2020, at 5:35 AM, G?bor Cs?rdi <csardi.gabor at gmail.com> wrote: Dear all, the new CRAN URL checks flag HTTP 301 redirects. While I understand the intent, I think this is unfortunate, because several URL shortener services use 301 redirects, and often a shorter URL is actually better in a manual page than a longer one that can be several lines long in the console and also potentially truncated in the PDF manual. Some example shorteners that are flagged:
db <- tools:::url_db(c("https://nyti.ms", "https://t.co/mtXLLfYOYE"), "README")
tools:::check_url_db(db)
URL: https://nyti.ms (moved to https://www.nytimes.com/) From: README Status: 200 Message: OK URL: https://t.co/mtXLLfYOYE (moved to https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-47975564) From: README Status: 200 Message: OK
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