GitHub relative link in Markdown file

Question

Is there a way to create a URL anchor, , link from within a Markdown file, to another file within the same repository and branch (aka a link relative t

Answer 1

Update 30th, January 2013, 16 months later:

GitHub Blog Post Relative links in markup files:

Starting today, GitHub supports relative links in markup files.
Now you can link directly between different documentation files, whether you view the documentation on GitHub itself, or locally, using a different markup renderer.

You want examples of link definitions and how they work? Here's some Markdown for you.
Instead of an absolute link:

[a link](https://github.com/user/repo/blob/branch/other_file.md)

…you can use a relative link:

[a relative link](other_file.md)

and we'll make sure it gets linked to user/repo/blob/branch/other_file.md.

If you were using a workaround like [a workaround link](repo/blob/master/other_file.md), you'll have to update your documentation to use the new syntax.

This also means your documentation can now easily stand on its own, without always pointing to GitHub.

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Update December 20th, 2011:

The GitHub markup issue 84 is currently closed by technoweenie, with the comment:

We tried adding a tag for this, but it causes problems with other relative links on the site.

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October 12th, 2011:

If you look at the raw source of the README.md of Markdown itself(!), relative paths don't seem to be supported.
You will find references like:

[r2h]: http://github.com/github/markup/tree/master/lib/github/commands/rest2html
[r2hc]: http://github.com/github/markup/tree/master/lib/github/markups.rb#L13