re-evaluate issue 1977, direct to specific version

[sdarwin]

Consider issue 1977.

"/libs/asio should redirect to /latest not the latest version by number"

It seems a problem with this, is that it takes the web visitor to a long url .../latest/... which by itself is not problematic, and /libs/asio will always take you to the right page in the future.

However an issue arises when you continue navigating from there, and click further links, to other pages. All of them will be /latest/ too, right? Naturally.

So you end up at a "deep link" such as https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/latest/doc/html/boost_asio/reference.html. This page is not guaranteed to be "evergreen". It might not exist in 5 years. If anyone copy-pastes this link, it may eventually be wrong.

Meanwhile, if you do the opposite of issue 1977, and link to a specific version number, then the link will be https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_90_0/doc/html/boost_asio/reference.html. This will not ever be missing.

And so it's a real reason to revert issue 1977. If you have comments, please discuss further.

[pdimov]

Even the initial redirect of https://boost.org/libs/asio is a deep link - it goes to https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/latest/doc/html/boost_asio.html, which is a file (doc/html/boost_asio.html) that is not guaranteed to exist in future releases.

This is not limited to the target of the https://boost.org/libs/asio redirect. For another example, if I open boost.org, click on search, then type "asio" and click on one of the Asio links that show up, this also takes me to a deep link containing "latest".

In my opinion, "latest" should simply not exist, except possibly temporarily (opening a link containing "latest" should immediately redirect to the same link with "latest" replaced with the release at the time of opening). That's how the old site worked, except it used "release" instead of "latest". (Also, I'm not sure that it ever produced links containing "release" from anywhere; you could only open such a link by typing it by hand.)

[sdarwin]

https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/latest/doc/html/boost_asio.html not guaranteed to exist in future releases.

There are multiple angles to view the same fact.

From one perspective, the above issue doesn't matter. The web redirect libs/asio/ will always take you to the right place, even in the future.

However where it does matter, is if someone (automatically) follows the redirect, gets /doc/libs/latest/doc/html/boost_asio.html and then chooses to embed that full URL in a document.

[pdimov]

It doesn't need to be a document. There are a million places where one can post a link - Reddit, Github issues...

The web redirect libs/asio/ will always take you to the right place, even in the future.

How is this relevant in any way?

[joaquintides]

There are pros and cons to both approaches. IMHO, the benefit of having users redirected to latest outweigh the potential problems with URLs invalidated in the future --we designed latest precisely because the Internet is littered with version-specific URLs and there's a concern users may not notice these are outdated.

[pdimov]

Well, no, it doesn't outweigh them. When I post a link to a specific place in the documentation, I never want this link to start pointing somewhere else. I want it to reference exactly what it referenced when I posted it, because this is why I posted it, to reference this specific thing.

[joaquintides]

Fixed-version URLs stay the same no matter what we do here. The problem is with version-less URLs getting resolved to some fixed-version URL different than latest.

[pdimov]

They obviously do, except there's no easy way to get to them. Github has "copy permalink" for this purpose, we do not.

[pdimov]

I'll try to explain once more.

Suppose you're answering a Reddit comment, or commenting on a Github issue, or answering a Stack Overflow question, or anything else along these lines. The topic is the Asio executor concept, so you want to link to the reference documentation of executor and your answer depends on the context this reference documentation provides at the time you are writing your comment.

You go to https://boost.org/libs/asio, then click on "Reference", then click on "executor", copy the URL from the address bar, and paste it.

Or, you go to boost.org, click on the search icon, type "asio executor", see that this doesn't bring up what you wanted, click on "Asio > Reference", then on "executor".

In both cases, this results in your pasting the link https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/latest/doc/html/boost_asio/reference/Executor1.html#boost_asio.reference.Executor1.standard_executors.

This is wrong. This link may be broken in the very next Boost release. Even if it isn't, the page may start saying different things from what it did at the time you posted, so your comments may start making no sense at all.

When is "latest" not wrong? Supposedly, in the scenario in which you wanted to post the top level link to the Asio documentation, latest release. But it's not correct even then. Because opening https://boost.org/libs/asio redirects to https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/latest/doc/html/boost_asio.html, and this link is not guaranteed to take you to the Asio documentation in the future because it's a deep link referencing a file that may not exist in the future if the documentation changes.