Shortened URL for the commit message guidelines no longer works and change of URL shortening service

[VoltrexKeyva]

As of now, the shortened URL redirecting to our commit message guidelines (https://goo.gl/p2fr5Q) in our commit linter no longer works due to an incorrect path and the URL shortening service will no longer work in the future, Google is transitioning from the Google URL Shortener to Firebase Dynamic Links as stated here.

For a trusted and long lasting new shortened URLs, it is a good idea one for one of the TSC members to create a new shortened URL to redirect to our commit message guidelines and for other shortened URLs that I might've missed by taking these steps or using a different URL shortener.

That being said, it's better to involve the TSC, so @nodejs/tsc.

[mmarchini]

@VoltrexMaster do you have any suggestions of a different url shortener?

[VoltrexKeyva]

@VoltrexMaster do you have any suggestions of a different url shortener?

From my experience, Bitly and TinyURL provide a great URL shortener service, but there are others that might be preferred by other TSC members.

[RaisinTen]

Is it necessary to keep the url in the linter title? The linter already enforces the rules it needs to and given that the link is not something people can click, I don't think it is used a lot.

I don't think we use a lot of shortened urls. The only other one I found is in https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/ccb8aae3932c13f33622203b2ffc5a33120e9d40/lib/util.js#L274 which can be replaced with the complete url.

[richardlau]

For something like the commit message guidelines (or other URLs whose content we maintain), we could create a subdomain under nodejs.org and redirect paths from there. e.g. something like https://contributing.nodejs.org/commit-messages? (Technically we could do it without a new subdomain, e.g. https://nodejs.org/commit-messages, but I think I'd like to avoid mixing where pages under https://nodejs.org originate from.)

[mmarchini]

I like that idea. Maybe we could host a URL shortener or a GH page (rendering our docs on https://github.com/nodejs/node/tree/master/doc/contributing) to simplify management of the URLs (I like the GH page option because it's one less server to manage).

[richardlau]

Is it necessary to keep the url in the linter title? The linter already enforces the rules it needs to and given that the link is not something people can click, I don't think it is used a lot.

Having reread this issue, @RaisinTen raises a good point. We originally used the shortened URL when we were testing in Travis, which did allow for it to be clickable. Thinking it about it more, we only need to point people to the guidelines on failure in that workflow because if it passes there's nothing to be done.

I've opened https://github.com/nodejs/core-validate-commit/pull/95 to print the full https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/HEAD/doc/contributing/pull-requests.md#commit-message-guidelines URL at the end of the TAP output on failure. Since GitHub's "Details" links on PR check failures automatically expand to the failing section, this should put the URL directly above the Error: Process completed with exit code 123. line. I think GitHub will also automatically make the link clickable. We could then remove the shortened URL from the workflow name.

[richardlau]

https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/42168 will drop the shortened URL from the commit message linter workflow title.

If the only other example of a shortened URL is https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/41697#issuecomment-1022158655 I'd suggest we update that with a full URL and not bother using/setting up an alternative URL shortening service.

[RedYetiDev]

It appears all uses of these shortlinks have been removed, can this issue be closed?