Redirects can break metadata lookups on Connect

[colearendt]

We recently migrated our internal Connect server to a new URL and set up a redirect from old -> new.

Pins mostly handles this OK, but returned some invalid metadata that generated error messages like:

Error: Can't find version '400657'

Basically, pin_versions() seemed to return an array of versions that was not necessarily associated with the pin in question

Slack thread with details: https://positpbc.slack.com/archives/C03DK5MJW6S/p1690668801613589?thread_ts=1690667853.301989&cid=C03DK5MJW6S

@jspiewak

[machow]

Is there any chance you could get the version of pins that produced this error?

(Another quick thought is that changing the server url fixed it, and that would also create a new cache. Though pretty stumped at the repeated version numbers!)

[jspiewak]

See the Slack thread. I fetched the versions for several of the pins.

[machow]

Ah, sorry--that was bad phrasing on my part. I meant to say-- what was the version of the pins package you were using? 😅

[jspiewak]

Unfortunately not able to reproduce at the moment, and it is possible this was before updating to latest pins version (1.2.0).

[juliasilge]

I'm definitely interested in any details that could help reproduce this! Seeing what you got from pin_versions() is pretty mystifying to me.

[juliasilge]

Related to the problems that came up during our internal Connect server migration, we now have these merged in:

• Move ellipsis checking #770
• Add documentation for how to clear Connect caches #771

Still to do is deal with:

• Need better errors for bad or outdated environment variable for Connect server URL #776
• Verify Connect url on board creation #763

According to my notes from our small retro on the migration, I believe this is all we can currently reproduce so I'm going to close this issue about those bananas 🍌 problems with the metadata. Please feel free to reopen or make a new issue if we have something more to work with on problems we observed!

[github-actions]

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