[docs] [issue35435] Documentation of 3.3 is available

[Ned Deily]

Ned Deily <nad at python.org> added the comment:

> I think as it stands, this ticket is "not a bug".

Indeed, this is not only not a bug, it's a feature that the docs for every Python release family are available on-line.  That said, we do have two sets of URLs that point to these docs:

1. https://docs.python.org/release/x.y.z/ which is the canonical link to the docs for a particular release and linked to from https://www.python.org/doc/versions/

2. https://docs.python.org/x.y/ (along with /x) which points to the most recent top of branch doc build for that branch.  For the next feature release branch (master) and branches still in bug-fix mode, the docs are automatically updated several times a day.  For 2.x and 3.x branches in security-fix mode or at end-of-life (retired), there are symlinks here that point to the doc set for the most recent release of that branch, i.e. the same doc set available in https://docs.python.org/release/x.y.z/.

There is already in place a restriction in the robots.txt file for the docs.python.org server to not webcrawl anything under /release but there is nothing (AFAICT) telling webcrawlers to ignore the "symlinked" aliases at /x.y, and that would seem to be the case here.

Without spending too much time on it, it seems to me there are s number of issues here:
1. What URL schemes do we have and want to continue to support?
2. What things do we want to show up in search engine results?
3. How do we make that happen?
4. How do we maintain this going forward?

One possibility that comes to mind:
1. unchanged from today
2. just the most current 3.x maintenance release (e.g. today 3.7)?  People needing accessing to other current or security-fix branches (dev, 3.6, 2.7, 3.5) can access those docsets through the version switcher pulldown on the doc webpages.
3. What isn't so obvious today is how to get to docsets for other, older releases.  For that, perhaps we could add an "Other ..." or some such item to the version switcher list that would link to the complete list at https://www.python.org/doc/versions/ ?
4. If we think it is important to indefinitely provide the links at https://docs.python.org/x.y/ even after the release is retired, we could add a step to the release process to add an entry to robots.txt when a release enters security-fix-mode ?  Or earlier?  That gets back to question 2.

I think this all is something for our release docs expert, Julien, to look into.

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assignee: docs at python -> mdk
nosy: +ned.deily

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue35435>
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