[Rd] New URL redirect checks

[Simon Urbanek]

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, Gábor Csárdi <csardi.gabor using 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
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>