Absolute links from "docs-de." to "docs." lead to the wrong page when using the latest version of MkDocs Material Insiders

[lastzero]

After the recent update to MkDocs Material v9.5.45+insiders-4.53.14, links from https://docs-de.photoprism.app/ (de) to https://docs.photoprism.app/ (en) no longer lead to the actual linked page, but to the same page in the English documentation (if it exists), or to the English start page otherwise.

You can test this by clicking e.g. on the first link of this page (deinem originals Ordner):

• https://docs-de.photoprism.app/user-guide/backups/

It should take you to https://docs.photoprism.app/getting-started/docker-compose/#photoprismoriginals, but instead it loads https://docs.photoprism.app/user-guide/backups/.

The corresponding configuration for the alternate languages is as follows

# External links.
extra:
  generator: false
  homepage: https://www.photoprism.app/
  alternate:
    - name: 🇬🇧 English
      link: https://docs.photoprism.app/
      lang: en
    - name: 🇩🇪 Deutsch
      link: /
      lang: de

Is this a glitch that will be fixed in an upcoming update, or do we need to change something in our configuration to ensure the links work as expected? 🤔

[squidfunk]

We're going to need a proper bug report, know which version you've used before and which exact release broke the functionality, and a minimal reproduction. Last change on language switching is from 7 and 10 months ago. Knowing which is the last version that worked would make it simpler to find the cause. Also, yes, multi-project support is undergoing a complete rewrite, so it's expected to be fixed in the future, but I think we should try and fix this one as well.

[lastzero]

Thank you for your quick response!

We'll do our best to find the exact software versions that are affected. However, this may be difficult and time consuming as we update almost every week and only found this problem today by accident when clicking on such a link in our German documentation. All other absolute and relative links, i.e. not pointing to the English documentation, seem to work as expected.

Since the rendered HTML is correct and the redirect doesn't lead to the exact page specified in the href attribute, the problem is most likely caused by a JavaScript click handler on the originating site (in our case, https://docs-de.photoprism.app/). It may therefore be worth checking the corresponding JavaScript code in the current version for any obvious issues.

If you would like to check them, our documentation and mkdocs.yml configuration files are publicly hosted on GitHub:

• https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism-docs/blob/master/mkdocs.yml
• https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism-docs/blob/master/mkdocs.deploy.yml
• https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism-docs-de/blob/master/mkdocs.yml
• https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism-docs-de/blob/master/mkdocs.deploy.yml

[squidfunk]

I'm sorry, but I currently don't have the time to check your specific setup. We need a minimal reproduction to work on this. by going through our bug reporting process, we can ensure that the problem does not come from any of your customizations.

[lastzero]

Thanks for your feedback anyway! As maintainer, I fully understand the time constraints which is also why I need to move forward working on our own project. Updating to the latest version once again, setting an absolute language version url or disabling instant navigation all didn't seem to change the behavior. However, a missing CORS header always appears to take users to the home page, regardless of whether the same page exists. So it probably is related to the sitemap.xml in some way. If it's not a known issue and it can not easily be debugged / resolved, then so be it :)

[kamilkrzyskow]

Likely an issue with instant navigation loading, as probably each subdomain has their own sitemap.xml and the links can't be resolved, so it somehow defaults to the same path that is currently viewed and restarts the subdomain 🤔

[lastzero]

I've noticed the cross-site requests to the sitemap.xml files and initially assumed that missing CORS headers were causing the problem. However, adding Access-Control-Allow-Origin headers to allow the requests didn't solve the issue.

It may be that absolute links always took users to the home page of the target site, whereas now they go to the same page if it exists, but both is not expected when using absolute links (which are also correctly rendered in the resulting HTML) to point to a specific URL?

Also, as I understand it, external links should not break depending on whether the CORS headers are set correctly or not?

[squidfunk]

Turning off instant navigation might be the first thing to try narrowing it down.

[kamilkrzyskow]

I've noticed that both of the sites were built using different versions of the Material theme. Compare the generator meta tag in the <head>. This happened because between the builds a new release was published. Perhaps instant loading compares the generator metadata 🤔

[squidfunk]

Nope, it only reads the sitemap. However, instant navigation might not even be the cause:

Updating to the latest version once again, setting an absolute language version url or disabling instant navigation all didn't seem to change the behavior.

Maybe it's a combination of things, which is exactly why we need a repro 😅