id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc	stage	has_patch	needs_docs	needs_tests	needs_better_patch	easy	ui_ux
32720	Add configuration for Sphinx linkcheck builder.	Nick Pope	Nick Pope	"It would be helpful to configure the `linkcheck` builder for Sphinx.

I found a single reference to this being used in the past in #8728, but links come and go all the time and need to be checked on an ongoing basis.

There are many benefits to running the link checker on a regular basis:

- Identify links that are broken and need to be fixed.
- Identify sites that are now redirecting to HTTPS where we want to use that instead of insecure links.
- Reduce the number of one-off requests to fix links when users come across them.

I propose the following steps:

1. Add some initial configuration and documentation, fix broken links, and ""canonicalize"" some links to avoid redirects.
1. ~~Add a scheduled GitHub action to check for broken links, or redirects that could be simplified, on a weekly/monthly basis.~~

~~The second step would need to wait for [https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/issues/6525 sphinx-doc/sphinx#6525] to be addressed so that we can treat desired redirections as ""working"" links instead of ""redirected"", e.g. `https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/` → `https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.2/`.~~

~~The `linkcheck` builder generates `docs/_build/linkcheck/output.{json,txt}` which could be filtered and attached as an artifact from the GitHub action to make it easier to provide a report on what needs fixing.~~

Here's a [https://github.com/django/django/pull/14325 PR]~~ for the first step~~.

(Migrated suggestion for a scheduled GitHub action to #32723.)"	Cleanup/optimization	assigned	Documentation	dev	Normal		linkcheck		Accepted	1	0	0	0	1	0