Links between markdown pages don't work on DevOps pipeline build

[PBoog]

Expected behaviour On my laptop I clone my wiki, put the WikiPDFExport binary in the root and run an export for a specific sub folder of the wiki using the following instruction:

./azuredevops-export-wiki.exe --b --path .\Index\Application-Troubleshooting --attachments-path .\.attachments

This generates an export.pdf in which links between my markdown pages work. For example in page /Index/Application-Troubleshooting/database.md I can specify a link like this

[Back to checklist](/Index/Application-Troubleshooting/checklist.md)

In the PDF it becomes a clickable link.

Issue If I do the same thing in an Azure devops pipeline the export.pdf is generated but none of the links between different markdown pages work.

Side note I have also noticed that running the WikiPDFExport binary without any parameters will correctly include images from .attachments on my laptop. However in the Azure pipeline I need to specify --attachments-path ./.attachments to get the images to show up.

Looks like a difference in run time environment but no idea what it could be ;) I have tried looking at the verbose output but that didn't help. Any thoughts on what could be causing this?

[PBoog]

Small update: I have tried a few different approaches in my devops pipeline

• Powershell build task on Windows 2022 build agent
• Bash build task on Ubuntu 22.04 build agent
• WIKI PDF Exporter build task on both windows and ubuntu build agents

For all of them the links between markdown pages are not working.

[PBoog]

Further investigation: I have also tried with a build agent in a private pool but it suffers from the same issue. Looks like it might be something related to the environment of the Azure DevOps build agent?

[PBoog]

Using debug output I see a difference in the .html files. Locally I get links like this in the .html file: <li><a href="#checklist">Troubleshooting checklist</a></li>

On the build agent I get links like this in the .html file: <li><a href="/Index/Application-Troubleshooting/checklist.md">Troubleshooting checklist</a></li>

So it looks like the pipeline build agent is not able to properly convert the link paths to anchors. With verbose logging I see that there is a different behavior in the generation of the anchors.

Locally I get this output:

checklist.md
    Correcting Links and Images
    Markdown link: camera
    Correcting Links and Images
    Markdown link: redlight
    Correcting Links and Images
    Markdown link: sensorview
    Correcting Links and Images
    Markdown link: actuator
    Correcting Links and Images
      Anchor: checklist

On the build agent it is a bit different, it only creates anchors for the pages but not for the links on the page:

checklist.md
    Correcting Links and Images
    Correcting Links and Images
    Correcting Links and Images
    Correcting Links and Images
    Correcting Links and Images
      Anchor: checklist

Looking at the code in MarkdownConverter.cs I suspect it goes wrong with the path mapping to decide if it is a markdown file or not. The paths on the build agent look relatively normal: D:\a\1\s\Index\Application-Troubleshooting But there might be something else going on ;-)

[PBoog]

Update: To figure out what is going wrong I thought to add some log messages to see what happens. I'm using .NET 6.0 SDK with Visual studio 2022, publishing as a local Windows executable. I just pulled the code, opened the solution, added some log messages and compiled. Turns out my own compiled version does not have the issue.

So I suspect there is a difference in the way the release executable is getting built? I'm stumped as to what is going on but happy to help reproduce or investigate. In any case I have a workaround by using my own compiled version ;)

[MaxMelcher]

do you run it on windows or linux?

[PBoog]

My own build that does not have the issue is done on Windows. It works locally and in a Microsoft Azure DevOps pipeline.

For the release build that I downloaded from github:

• The windows build works locally on my laptop
• The windows build does not create links when running in a Microsoft Azure DevOps pipeline
• The linux build does not create links when running in a Microsoft Azure DevOps pipeline

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[PBoog]

Thank you stale bot but this one is still open :)

[PBoog]

Thanks for keeping this on the backlog @MaxMelcher, if you need any further tests from my side please let me know.

[MaxMelcher]

Fixed in af0a226d787fe91314b2ab0a387ffbe754ba4d54

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.