Follow up PR #3: footer, README, and workflow reliability fixes

[solrevdev]

Summary

PR #3 (feat: improve package search relevance and document remaining backlog) landed the first low-risk frontend/search improvements and merged to master on 2026-03-27.

This issue tracks the next recommended batch that was explicitly called out in that PR handoff:

• #3 Replace placeholder repo URL in footer
• #4 Fix duplicate/malformed README summary block
• #22 Resolve README license filename mismatch
• #2, #20, #19, #21 workflow reliability fixes

Suggested Branch

Create a fresh branch from current master:

codex/pr3-followups-readme-workflows

Do not target gh-pages for development work. gh-pages is the generated deployment branch.

Background Context

PR #3 summary:

• Implemented regex-safe highlighting, ranked search, shortDescription fallback, URL query-state support, homepage/license rendering, click-to-filter, incremental rendering, and extractor cleanup.
• Updated IMPROVEMENTS.md with a branch handoff section and recommended next steps.
• Confirmed that the build workflow only triggers automatically on push to main/master.

Operational note discovered after merge:

• The repo can have a successful Build and Deploy workflow run and still serve 404 if GitHub Pages is disabled at the repository level.
• This has now been documented in README.md and IMPROVEMENTS.md.
• Keep the current deployment model: merge to master, workflow publishes to gh-pages, and repo Pages must stay enabled.

Scope

1. Footer repo URL

File:

• index.html

Work:

• Replace the placeholder YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_REPO_NAME GitHub URL in the footer with the real repository URL.

2. README cleanup

File:

• README.md

Work:

• Fix the malformed opening block and duplicated summary content.
• Resolve the license filename/link mismatch (LICENSE vs license.txt).
• Keep the recently added Pages deployment requirement documentation accurate while cleaning up the README.

3. Workflow reliability fixes

Files:

• .github/workflows/github_workflows_build.yml
• force_pages_update.sh

Work:

• #2 Replace the cache key strategy so cache hits can happen across runs.
• #20 Stop hardcoding origin/master when updating the cached winget-pkgs checkout; detect and use the repo's default branch.
• #19 Remove the hardcoded /winget-search/ redirect path from the generated 404.html logic so the project is less template-fragile.
• #21 Update force_pages_update.sh so it restores the original checked-out branch instead of assuming master.

Acceptance Criteria

• The footer links to the real GitHub repo.
• The README starts cleanly, has no duplicated summary block, and references the actual license filename in the repo.
• The main workflow uses a reusable cache key instead of github.run_id.
• The workflow and helper script no longer assume master where branch detection is needed.
• The Pages 404 redirect logic is not tied to a hardcoded repo path.
• Deployment behavior remains: source changes merge to master, generated site is published to gh-pages.

Validation

Minimum validation to rerun before opening the next PR:

• python3 -m py_compile extract_packages.py
• node --check on the extracted inline JS from index.html
• Run the site locally and verify:
  • / loads
  • /?q=chrome loads
  • footer repo link is correct
  • README references are consistent
• If workflow changes are made, review the generated 404.html behavior and branch-handling logic carefully.

References

• Closed PR: feat: improve package search relevance and document remaining backlog #3
• Backlog source: IMPROVEMENTS.md -> Branch Progress Update (2026-02-26)
• Current deployment model: master source branch + workflow publish to gh-pages