`link-checker` failure

[yoavweiss]

We're seeing link-checker related failures in w3c/requestidlecallback#106

Is this something other repos are seeing as well?

/cc @deniak

[deniak]

@sidvishnoi I believe link-checker is not compatible with node 24. I was able to reproduce the error with the latest version of node but it worked fine with node 22.
link-checker is requiring superagent 3.8.3 but the support for old versions of node has been dropped a long time ago.

[sidvishnoi]

Do we have an alternative library available? I started work on one a while ago but didn't finish (no time).
Since start, the link checker has caused troubles. I'd recommend disabling it in workflows till we find a better solution. If too many specs are using it, we can disable it on spec-prod end (a new patch release).

[deniak]

I've also looked at integrating a linkchecker with pubrules but all the options I found at the time had some issues.
I found linkinator which seems to be maintained and there's even a github action to use it directly.

[yoavweiss]

I'd recommend disabling it in workflows till we find a better solution.

Does that mean removing VALIDATE_LINKS: true?