ci: switch dead link checker from wget to lychee - #2501
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Brendan Walsh (BrendanWalsh)
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The wget --spider --recursive approach was causing ~7% flaky failures because it blasts 1500+ requests without rate limiting, triggering GitHub Pages transient errors. Every 'broken' link actually returns 200 when tested individually. Lychee provides: - Controlled concurrency (8 parallel requests) - Retry with backoff (5 retries, 5s wait) - Proper timeout handling (30s per request) - Structured output and better error reporting - Purpose-built for link checking (vs wget which is a downloader)
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Related Issues/PRs
Fixes flaky Check Dead Links GitHub Action (~7% failure rate since Dec 2025).
What changes were proposed in this pull request?
Replaces
wget --spider --recursivewith lychee, a purpose-built link checker.Root cause of flakiness:
wgetblasts 1500+ requests without rate limiting, triggering transient GitHub Pages errors. Every "broken" link reported by CI actually returns HTTP 200 when tested individually. The check found 7 different "broken" URLs across 7 failures — all different, all actually working.Why lychee:
How was this patch tested?
Does this PR introduce any user-facing change?
No