rustdoc: Optionally generate foo/index.html with foo/ links, instead of foo.html

[SimonSapin]

Currently, rustdoc generates HTML links like <a href="../std/index.html"> (this is from the crate index side bar.) When docs are served over HTTP(S), with most servers, <a href="../std/"> works just as well and looks nicer. However this doesn’t work when when locally-generated docs are viewed with file://… URLs.

There should be an off-by-default option in rustdoc to generate the shorter links instead.

Edit: while we’re at it, every foo.html page should also be foo/index.html instead, so that short links are not just for pages that are already something/index.html.

[steveklabnik]

Is there a good reason to not include the index.html other than aesthetics?

[SimonSapin]

No, this is purely aesthetics.

There is precedent in Sphinx’s dirhtml builder, which goes even further than I remembered and generates every page as foo/index.html (with short foo/ links) instead of foo.html.

[SimonSapin]

An example of Sphinx docs that use dirhtml: http://weasyprint.org/docs/

[steveklabnik]

Triage: no change

[steveklabnik]

Triage: no change.

[Mark-Simulacrum]

Closing in favor of #16103.

[SimonSapin]

That is not the same (having a top-level index at all vs generating shorter links to existing indices), but I’m not really attached to this anymore so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Mark-Simulacrum]

Yeah, I'm also not a fan of breaking file:// viewing. Will keep closed unless someone requests otherwise.

[SimonSapin]

Yes, the suggestion was an off-by-default option.