Microsoft moving their documentation to GitHub – What could go wrong?

I’m not a Windows expert: as much as I dislike Microsoft for their lack of ethics, this should be no surprise. So when I do need to do Microsofty-sorts-of-things, I need to RTFM – which I’m fine with. They took the time to write the manual so I wouldn’t waste valuable people’s time with basic questions. I should Read The Friendly Manual.

I also know that things people link to might change behind the scenes. There’s no way for the changer to know that something else on the planet links here, so yes dead links happen. It should be a temporary problem; and as soon as someone who knows where the page moved to can supply the answer, the dead link can be fixed.

Recently I got a 404 This is not the web page you are looking for on Github. The source document is on Microsoft’s GitHub for PowerShell. Specifically the paragraph that said “Install PowerShell using Winget (recommended)”. That contained the sentence “Note: see the winget documentation for install instructions.”

I’ve never dealt with Winget before, so yes, please, let me read how to install it.

As of this moment, if you were to click on the link winget documentation you get 404 This is not the web page you are looking for.

Okay, this can happen. I have zero idea of what the actual link should be; but, I can let someone know there is a problem. I opened an issue in GitHub.

And it was closed, with the comment “The URL is correct on the published docs site. The links in the markdown source files are relative to the docs site, not to Github”

Well that’s nice. Between that and 404 pennies, I can get a coffee at Starbucks.

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