rlc

A concurrent link checker. Checks a list of URLs and reports which are alive, their HTTP status, and how long each took.

Statuses:

• HTTP status (e.g. 200 OK) — the URL responded
• DEAD — the request failed (timeout after 7 seconds, DNS, network error)
• INVALID — the input is not a valid URL (e.g. missing a scheme)

Install

Requires Go installed (download).

go install github.com/orashus/rlc@latest

This puts the rlc binary in your Go bin directory (usually ~/go/bin).

Usage

• Basic

  rlc <url1> <url2> ...

  Each request times out after 7 seconds.

• Print the version:

  rlc --version
  # or: rlc -v / rlc version

• Run with no arguments to check a built-in demo list:

  rlc

Example

rlc https://go.dev https://google.com https://example.com https://thisurldoesnotexist.example not-a-url

Output:

URL                                           STATUS               TIME
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
not-a-url                                     INVALID              0s
https://thisurldoesnotexist.example           DEAD                 190ms
https://example.com                           200 OK               300ms
https://go.dev                                200 OK               250ms
https://google.com                            200 OK               180ms
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Checked 5 links (3 alive, 1 dead, 1 invalid) in 300ms

Results print as each check finishes (fast links first). Total time is roughly the slowest link — not the sum — because checks run concurrently.

Develop locally

From this directory:

go run .
# or install your local copy
go install .

Version tagging on github

• Create the version tag

  git tag -a v1.0.0 -m "Release version 1.0.0"
  # or the lightweight tag with
  ## git tag v1.0.0

• Push the code to that tag

  git push origin v1.0.0

• To delete a tag

  git tag -d v1.0.0 # locally
  git push --delete origin v1.0.0 # remote tags
  # Make your new changes, commit and push to a fresh tag...