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check_redirects.py: flag redirects over unlisted pages and loops through wildcard destinations #2380
Description
Two gaps in scripts/check_redirects.py came up in the review of #2369. Neither shows up in docs.json today.
A redirect whose source is a real page on disk is dead: Mintlify serves the page and the redirect never fires (checked with mint dev in the #2369 review). The check only catches this when the page is in navigation. A page that exists on disk but isn't in navigation, such as hidden.mdx with a redirect from /hidden, passes. The fix is to test whether the page exists for each source as well as navigation. Wildcard sources need some thought: does /a/:slug* over an existing /a/b.mdx fire, or does the page win? That needs checking against mint dev first.
The check deliberately doesn't follow chains through wildcard destinations, because section renames rely on them (/build-on-celo/:slug* → /build/:slug* → newer exact entries). As a result, /p/:slug* → /q/:slug* together with /q/:slug* → /p/:slug* loops and passes. A walk of at most five hops that fails on a repeated source would catch loops without flagging the chains we want.
Both need unit tests in scripts/test_check_redirects.py alongside the existing cases.
Activity
palango commentedon Oct 7, 2026
One more case from the latest #2369 review: a wildcard that redirects to itself,
/p/:slug*to/p/:slug*, also passes the check today. It is the cheapest loop to catch, since it needs no walk at all, just a source equal to its destination. It belongs with the loop check above and needs its own unit test.