Fixed #23960 -- Removed http.fix_location_header

Thanks Carl Meyer for the report and Tim Graham for the review.

docs/internals/deprecation.txt

@@ -22,6 +22,10 @@ details on these changes.
 
 * The ``assignment_tag`` helper will be removed.
 
+* The ``host`` argument to ``assertsRedirects`` will be removed. The
+  compatibility layer which allows absolute URLs to be considered equal to
+  relative ones when the path is identical will also be removed.
+
 .. _deprecation-removed-in-2.0:
 
 2.0

docs/ref/request-response.txt

@@ -824,8 +824,10 @@ types of HTTP responses. Like ``HttpResponse``, these subclasses live in
 
     The first argument to the constructor is required -- the path to redirect
     to. This can be a fully qualified URL
-    (e.g. ``'http://www.yahoo.com/search/'``) or an absolute path with no
-    domain (e.g. ``'/search/'``). See :class:`HttpResponse` for other optional
+    (e.g. ``'http://www.yahoo.com/search/'``), an absolute path with no domain
+    (e.g. ``'/search/'``), or even a relative path (e.g. ``'search/'``). In that
+    last case, the client browser will reconstruct the full URL itself
+    according to the current path. See :class:`HttpResponse` for other optional
     constructor arguments. Note that this returns an HTTP status code 302.
 
     .. attribute:: HttpResponseRedirect.url

docs/releases/1.9.txt

@@ -266,6 +266,21 @@ a directory. Now, Django only silences the exception if the template source
 does not exist. All other situations result in the original ``IOError`` being
 raised.
 
+HTTP redirects no longer forced to absolute URIs
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Relative redirects are no longer converted to absolute URIs. :rfc:`2616`
+required the ``Location`` header in redirect responses to be an absolute URI,
+but it has been superseded by :rfc:`7231` which allows relative URIs in
+``Location``, recognizing the actual practice of user agents, almost all of
+which support them.
+
+Consequently, the expected URLs passed to ``assertRedirects`` should generally
+no longer include the scheme and domain part of the URLs. For example,
+``self.assertRedirects(response, 'http://testserver/some-url/')`` should be
+replaced by ``self.assertRedirects(response, '/some-url/')`` (unless the
+redirection specifically contained an absolute URL, of course).
+
 Miscellaneous
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

docs/topics/testing/tools.txt

@@ -1398,7 +1398,7 @@ your test suite.
     You can use this as a context manager in the same way as
     :meth:`~SimpleTestCase.assertTemplateUsed`.
 
-.. method:: SimpleTestCase.assertRedirects(response, expected_url, status_code=302, target_status_code=200, host=None, msg_prefix='', fetch_redirect_response=True)
+.. method:: SimpleTestCase.assertRedirects(response, expected_url, status_code=302, target_status_code=200, msg_prefix='', fetch_redirect_response=True)
 
     Asserts that the response returned a ``status_code`` redirect status,
     redirected to ``expected_url`` (including any ``GET`` data), and that the
@@ -1408,14 +1408,6 @@ your test suite.
     ``target_status_code`` will be the url and status code for the final
     point of the redirect chain.
 
-    The ``host`` argument sets a default host if ``expected_url`` doesn't
-    include one (e.g. ``"/bar/"``).  If ``expected_url`` is an absolute URL that
-    includes a host (e.g. ``"http://testhost/bar/"``), the ``host`` parameter
-    will be ignored. Note that the test client doesn't support fetching external
-    URLs, but the parameter may be useful if you are testing with a custom HTTP
-    host (for example, initializing the test client with
-    ``Client(HTTP_HOST="testhost")``.
-
     If ``fetch_redirect_response`` is ``False``, the final page won't be
     loaded. Since the test client can't fetch externals URLs, this is
     particularly useful if ``expected_url`` isn't part of your Django app.
@@ -1425,6 +1417,11 @@ your test suite.
     the original request's scheme is used. If present, the scheme in
     ``expected_url`` is the one used to make the comparisons to.
 
+    .. deprecated:: 1.9
+
+        The ``host`` argument is deprecated, as redirections are no longer
+        forced to be absolute URLs.
+
 .. method:: SimpleTestCase.assertHTMLEqual(html1, html2, msg=None)
 
     Asserts that the strings ``html1`` and ``html2`` are equal. The comparison