markdown-link-check produces wrong results and exit status

[MikeMcC399]

Description

Apart from broken links reported in issue #663, there are two other issues concerning link check errors.

1. Running npm run check:markdown shows 403 link errors for links to the github.com domain although when the links are used manually they work, for example https://help.github.com/en/actions which opens https://docs.github.com/en/actions.
2. Although the markdown check reports link errors, the ci action main.yml shows success.

These two issues are described here together because the solution for both is interelated.

Steps to reproduce the issue

1. Execute npm run check:markdown and note "https://help.github.com/en/actions → Status: 403" which represents Forbidden

2. View for instance job 6151394979 and expand "Run npm run check:markdown".

Expected behavior

1. Running markdown-link-check should show no failures for links which work when manually used.

2. If there are failures from markdown-link-check then the action main.yml should show failure status.

Suggested fix

1. See https://github.com/gaurav-nelson/github-action-markdown-link-check#github-links-failure-fix for a suggested configuration file which mitigates the 403 forbidden errors when checking github.com domain links. Create a markdown-link-check configuration file and implement the configuration for GitHub.

2. Convert the script definition in

   github-action/package.json

   Line 16 in ced9ddd

   "check:markdown": "find *.md -exec npx markdown-link-check {} \\;",

   to use xargs instead of exec as suggested in https://github.com/tcort/markdown-link-check#check-links-from-a-local-markdown-folder-recursive

[MikeMcC399]

• I will prepare a PR to resolve this issue and I will wait until issue Broken links in README #663 is resolved to avoid causing a workflow failure if main.yml is changed to fail in the case of a failed markdown link check.

[MikeMcC399]

• PR Make check:markdown successful for github domain checks #667 resolves this issue

[MikeMcC399]

• PR Make check:markdown successful for github domain checks #667 was successful. See successful run 6264519072 with 134 links checked. and no link errors.