LibraryFileAlias needs a fmt:url

[Mark Shuttleworth]

It would be nice to be able to link to a libraryfile just using foo/file/fmt:url like all the other things in LP, rather than the custom foo/file/url. It's a tiny difference but it would make LibraryFileAlias'es similar to everything else.

[James Henstridge (jamesh)]

It looks like special casing would be necessary to get canonical_url() (fmt:url is just a wrapper for this function) to return the librarian URL.

I wonder if there are any other objects for which an external URL would make more sense to return? I suspect that they'd need to be unreachable as URLs under https://launchpad.net/ though, or it might cause problems with navigation.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Is special-casing required because the external librarian URL's are not
"cascading" like other Launchpad internal URL's? Steve, do you think
this is still feasible?

[Steve Alexander (stevea)]

The librarian is a part of launchpad. It makes sense to use fmt:url and canonical_url with librarian URLs. The librarian's base URL is available from the launchpad configuration file. This is all the same system, really.

The "cascading" thing ought to be just an optimisation; a convenience. It does allow us to do various kinds of inspection for auto-testing pages and things, so I want to keep it around in most cases. We can choose not to use it for librarian urls, though.

I don't want to use fmt:url for URLs that are truely external to launchpad. I think this would lead to confusion.

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

Still valid I think, but not currently on anyones plate nor slated to be.