(Poster’s note: Posted in/under the ‘General’ because the ‘Questions & Answers’ category is for posts discussing ‘installing, configuring, and running GitLab,’ presumably in reference to a local instance.)
I’m trying to use a reference-stye link inside a bulleted list that’s part of a Markdown file that’s hosted in a repository at GitLab.com, but I can’t get said link to render; I just get whitespace. I’ve tried a few possible syntax variations — namely ‘[reference-text]: <link-text> "title-attribute-text",’ ‘[reference-text]: link-text "title-attribute-text",’ and ‘[reference-text]: link-text’ without any text for the active Markdown parser to process into what would be the resulting raw HTML link’s ‘title’ attribute — to try and get it to work, but with no success.
Am I possibly hitting a bug in GitLab? Should I file an issue? Alternatively, am I doing something wrong, and, if so, what? I’m not 100& sure I have the syntax right here. I also saw The DevSecOps Platform | GitLab, but that’s just with respect to GitLab’s documentation style guide, which said issue links to.
Hello there, have you looked into GitLab flavoured markdown docs?
If my reply solved your problem, please mark it as the solution in this thread - else, please provide more information
Kind regards,
Aljaz S.
@aljaxus:
Yes, and they still list reference-style links as being available:
⋮
Links
There are two ways to create links, inline-style and reference-style:
⋮
Using references:
- This is a [reference-style link, see below][Arbitrary case-insensitive reference text]
- You can [use numbers for reference-style link definitions, see below][1]
- Or leave it empty and use the [link text itself][], see below.
⋮
Using references:
⋮
I notice multiple instances of the following HTML comment in that file’s raw source text, though:
<!--
Do not edit the following codeblock. It uses HTML to skip the Vale ReferenceLinks test.
-->
Finally, what additional information do you need? I can provide a link the file that I’m having trouble with, if that helps. (And I’m running the following browser and OS:
- Safari v11.1.2, build 11605.3.8.1
- OS X v10.11.6 ‘El Capitan,’ build 15G22010.)
(And, yes, I know this is old, but I can’t update past that major OS version on my current hardware, and I’ve currently frozen my local configuration temporarily while I migrate to another, newer machine.)
Hi,
I’d love to see the file and its content with your current state of trying this. I don’t think it is related to your client’s OS but more of a problem with Markdown formatting itself.
Cheers,
Michael
@dnsmichi:
Here you go! The offending line is the first one under its ‘References’ section’s ‘Useful Links’ sub-section.
(Edit: P. S.:
I also have an issue open for this on the repository hosting that file.)
@dnsmichi:
Have you filed a GitLab core issue for this, or should/shall I? I searched for one, but I couldn’t find that you had.
Hi,
I am really busy and am reading and answering in bulk when I get the time to. In order to avoid an - imho - unnecessary issue, I am writing this late in the evening 
Here’s a merge request for your project with a fix for the reference style URL:
I figured that explaining is hard, seeing the results and learning from that should be easier 
The MR also has some html comment blocks explaining the things going on.
Cheers,
Michael
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