Client-side page transitions do not work for catch-all routes

[keyworks]

Bug report

Describe the bug

When pushing a route that is handled by a catch-all page, I expect the routing to happen client-side. Instead, the entire page reloads and server-side routing is used.

For example, suppose I have defined the following page:

pages/
  [[...slug]].js
  page2.js

And suppose I have the following links defined somewhere:

<Link href="/page1">Page 1</Link>
<Link href="/page2">Page 2</Link>

When I click on Page 1, the page reloads as the routing happens server-side which is not ideal.
When I click on Page 2, the routing happens client-side which is ideal.

To Reproduce

1. git clone https://github.com/keyworks/next-catch-all-client-routing-issue.git
2. yarn dev and visit localhost:3000
3. Click on Page 1 link
4. Observe the entire page reloads (the page will flicker).

Expected behavior

Page should not reload, but instead page transition should happen client side.

Screenshots

n/a

System information

• OS: macOS
• Browser (if applies: Firefox 79.0
• Version of Next.js: 9.5.1
• Version of Node.js: 10.22.0

Additional context

n/a

[AubreyHewes]

You should do:

<Link href="/[...slug]" as="/page1">Page 1</Link>

Which entails a page file as [...slug].js

OR

<Link href="/[slug]" as="/page1">Page 1</Link>

Which entails a page file as [slug].js

The difference between [slug] and [...slug] is described in the documentation..

Hard (known?) pages can be done via href

This is all in the docs ;-) x

[keyworks]

This to me feels like an inconsistency in the API hence the bug report. For example, when I want a Link to client-side transition to page2.js, I do not need to define both a asPath and href param.

I would expect next client router to automatically know about catch-all page routes so that if I attempt to call router.push('/page1') or click on <Link href="/page1"/>, it would trigger a client-side page transition to [...slug].js. Instead the client router doesn't seem to know it exists so it defers to server routing and the whole document reloads.