"local resource missing" for symbolic links

[mernst]

There seems to be a problem with following symbolic links.

To reproduce the problem:

Install html5validator, because I have not removed dependences on it.

git clone https://github.com/randoop/randoop.git
cd randoop
./gradlew manual
./gradlew htmlSanityCheck

The ouptut of ./gradlew htmlSanityCheck includes:

> Task :installGitHooks UP-TO-DATE

> Task :htmlSanityCheck
********* HTML Sanity Checker findings report *********
created on 03. May 2019, 08:28 by version 1.1.3
checking took 16468 msecs.

Summary for all pages:
======================
checked 750 items on 5 pages, 
found 1 issue, 99% successful.
--------------------------------------------------
Summary for file index.html

page path  : /homes/gws/mernst/research/testing/randoop-branch-master/src/docs/index.html
page title : Randoop: Automatic unit test generation for Java
page size  : 4340 bytes


...

--------------------------------------------------
Results for Missing Local Resources Check
6 anchor tag href attribute checked,
1 missing local resources found.


local resource "api/" missing
--------------------------------------------------


...

Unless I am mistaken, the local resource "api/" does exist, but it is a symbolic link.
I am able to click on the link from randoop/src/docs/index.html and view the API documentation.

[gernotstarke]

I'm not sure if I'll find the time to investigate that ... afaik I rely on standard Java file operations here.

[ascheman]

Would you mind setting up a small sample project or even test case for #273 and #274, @mernst?
Reproducing this error is a lot of work based on the given randoop project (have to work through the project setup and install a lot of stuff as pre-requisite).

Perhaps you could even check on your side whether the problem still exists?

[mernst]

The problem persists, using version 1.1.6.

The prerequisites are discussed at https://randoop.github.io/randoop/manual/dev.html#prerequisites (which is linked from https://randoop.github.io/randoop/manual/index.html#getting_randoop), so you can install them all at once. Is there a particular one that you are having trouble with? Then I will know what parts of the project to prune away.

[ascheman]

Thanks for your fast reply, @mernst.
Randoop looks like an interesting project, maybe I should have a deeper look into this, but this is a different story.

However, it's a question of time. I have to work through your documentation which mentions a Dockerfile to meet prerequisites. But I do not understand whether I can just build your project by just using Docker? Neither do I have the time to reverse engineer the Dockerfiles for several Ubuntu versions (which one should I use)? Besides, I am working on macOS, so which tools would I need to build locally? How do they pollute my system (e.g., pip install)?

As you are an OSS maintainer yourself, you maybe have a good understanding how time consuming all of this is, in particular if it goes beyond just executing one script. We cannot afford the time to first fully understand the installation of your project to finally produce an (HTML) artifact which shows a problem in our project.

So please attach a (minimal) HTML example or ZIP/Tar including a symlink which shows your problem(s) in #273 and #274.