regression bug redirect_to stop working with relative paths on 0.12

[bcardiff]

With jekyll-redirect-from-0.11.0 redirect_to was not working for absolute paths as described in #130.

After jekyll-redirect-from-0.12.0 (and 0.12.1), redirect_to works with absolute paths but stop working with relative paths.

I extend the sample repo for #130 for testing redirects in the same directory https://github.com/bcardiff/issue-redirect-to/commit/5e87a14dda558de650a29a9a8f8eaca03bd36ac7 and across different directories https://github.com/bcardiff/issue-redirect-to/commit/950dfd74692bad04a4e1cf8e266def452f6d9940 .

I think that if the redirect_to is relative ./ or ../ the path could remain unchanged. Probably here but I am not jekyll-wise.

These are the generated outputs for 0.11:

_site/path/redirect-abs.html
<script>location="/nested/path1/original.html"</script>

_site/path/redirect-rel.html
<script>location="./original.html"</script>

_site/nested/path2/redirect-abs.html
<script>location="/nested/path1/original.html"</script>

_site/nested/path2/redirect-rel.html
<script>location="../path1/original.html"</script>

These are the generated output for 0.12:

_site/path/redirect-abs.html
<script>location="http://localhost:4000/issue-redirect-to/path/original.html"</script>

_site/path/redirect-rel.html
<script>location="http://localhost:4000/issue-redirect-to/original.html"</script>

_site/nested/path2/redirect-abs.html
<script>location="http://localhost:4000/issue-redirect-to/nested/path1/original.html"</script>

_site/nested/path2/redirect-rel.html
<script>location="http://localhost:4000/path1/original.html"</script>

[benbalter]

@bcardiff Thanks for the great but report. You're right, it appears to be the case (based on the code) that we need to resolve relative links before making them absolute. Is the same true for redirect_from?

[bcardiff]

Regarding redirect_from both 0.11 0.12 seems to behaves in the same buggy way. The only difference is in blank spaces.

I added https://github.com/bcardiff/issue-redirect-to/commit/a140b6f740944a56ba604dd27adfd87ba387aff1

# file: path/original.md
---
redirect_from:
  - ./with-from-rel.html
  - /path/with-from-abs.html

• creates _site/path/with-from-abs.html and creates _site/with-from-rel.html (due to absolute redirect they work, but the -rel.html path is not in the expected destination, hence the served url is wrong)

# file: nested/path1/original.md
---
redirect_from:
  - ../path2/with-from-rel-nested.html
  - nested/path2/with-from-abs-nested.html

• creates _site/nested/path2/with-from-abs-nested.html and creates _site/path2/with-from-rel-nested.html (due to absolute redirect they work, but the -rel-nested.html path is not the expected one)

[benbalter]

@bcardiff I don't think this plugin should support relative redirect_from or redirect_to paths. There's two reasons for this:

1. AFAIK, Jekyll doesn't support relative paths in any other context. If you have /foo/bar/baz.html and give it a permalink of ../page.html, it'll be outputted at /page.html.

2. Things get really confusing for end users really quickly. If I have redirect_from: ../foo.html, we need to build that off the page's permalink, not the page's path, meaning if there's a custom permalink set, or if pretty permalinks are enabled, you may end up in the case where a file in /bar.html with permalink: /foo/bar/ (which is really /foo/bar/index.html) with a redirect of ../foo.html really outputs to /foo/foo.html.

Is there a strong reason why the redirects can't be relative to the site source, rather than the file's URL?

[bcardiff]

No strong reason here. After I first posted #130, while the fix reach the stable version my workaround was to use relative paths. And they worked until 0.12. Since I was using them back then I discover the regression.

I am able to use just absolute paths and fully understand if this ends up out of scope and was working without explicit intent.

If this ends up in out of scope, maybe a proper error should apear to the user.

[jekyllbot]

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[ndarville]

This has tripped me up a bunch of time, and I think an error is the best way to go since a localhost redirect in production doesn’t do anyone any good.