Feature: linkcheck-action

[HunterGerlach]

• Add support for local build and linkchecking of docs
• Add GitHub Action to automatically check links before prior to publication
• Minor reformat of Contributing readme
• Fix existing broken links

[hwchase17]

yes! love this - thank you so much!!!!

[HunterGerlach]

@hwchase17 I am running into an issue with the link re-writes. Since they are rewritten from .rst, .md, and .ipynb, they are unable to be found by linkcheck. I put a brute force example in the conf.py of how we could solve this if necessary, but I would much rather have a clean method. Unfortunately, I'm not too well-versed on Sphinx to know if there's a "right" way to do this or not. Any ideas you have would be appreciated.

[hwchase17]

@hwchase17 I am running into an issue with the link re-writes. Since they are rewritten from .rst, .md, and .ipynb, they are unable to be found by linkcheck. I put a brute force example in the conf.py of how we could solve this if necessary, but I would much rather have a clean method. Unfortunately, I'm not too well-versed on Sphinx to know if there's a "right" way to do this or not. Any ideas you have would be appreciated.

ah yeah i think we need to use :doc: references everywhere. its also better practice in general so i guess this is a good forcing function

this is a bit tedious - i can take a stab at it tonight while im watching tv :)

[HunterGerlach]

I don't mind doing it to free you up for other more important tasks if you just want to do a few so I can see an example or two (e.g. .md and .ipynb).

[hwchase17]

I don't mind doing it to free you up for other more important tasks if you just want to do a few so I can see an example or two (e.g. .md and .ipynb).

i think (not 100%, need to spend some time to be sure) that ":doc:foo <utils/how_to_guides>:" should work?

[HunterGerlach]

We'll see...

[HunterGerlach]

I don't mind doing it to free you up for other more important tasks if you just want to do a few so I can see an example or two (e.g. .md and .ipynb).

i think (not 100%, need to spend some time to be sure) that ":doc:foo <utils/how_to_guides>:" should work?

I was unable to get it to work with make linkcheck - I think it's because it's checking the pre-compiled links before their extensions change and it gets confused.

I switched to using a dedicated linkchecker instead.

I have removed all broken links, so running this from now on should prevent any broken links from getting into master.

[hwchase17]

@HunterGerlach .... i dont think it is an overstatement to call you a hero for this

im gonna merge this into a dev branch and build a copy of the docs from that (just to check that the build-the-docs action works as expected with this)