Meta: can we fix the link checker?

[tobie]

Currently the link checker fails a number of pull requests for broken links that aren't created by the PR its.f/

Could we either:

• fix it so it only fails links relevant to the PR itself,
• have a process and/or someone in charge of fixing broken links, or
• remove it altogether?

[ljharb]

The second option is typically what’s done - someone has to fix the links in main.

An alternative would be to run it in a cron, instead of on PRs.

[joesepi]

I like the cron option.

[bnb]

Generally in the situation where it's failing, I'd hope we'd not block on that and also open a PR or Issue (even a small one) to note the failure and address it separately :)

AFAIK I don't think the first one is possible with the existing setup. Also, it does currently run on a cron and can be manually run if needed but given that nobody here's aware of that it might not be a good strategy to actually get the issues solved.

[tobie]

Generally in the situation where it's failing, I'd hope we'd not block on that and also open a PR or Issue (even a small one) to note the failure and address it separately :)

Agreed. The cognitive overhead is real, though.

[bnb]

I really wish GitHub provided a mechanism to mark a check as optional in Actions (it was possible in v1, but not v2 unfortunately)

[ljharb]

What do you mean optional - everything's optional unless the branch protections mark it as required, no?

[bnb]

GitHub Actions v1 and GitHub Apps have a third, neutral state that's not pass/fail. GitHub Actions v2 does not (there's an issue that's been open for years and the SDK docs said it's an upcoming feature for just as long IIRC).

[ljharb]

oh woof, that's a real shame it's not well-supported :-/

[bnb]

it's fixed :)

[bnb]

refs: #918 #917