$location shouldn't rewrite the browser's location on URL change

[laurentgoudet]

We're trying to introduce Angular into a legacy code base composed of various backbone apps using client side routers, i.e. relying on a specific location.hash to show a state.

No routing is done by Angular, however injecting/using the $location service rewrite the location hash (on a URL change) to add a forward '/' (https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/master/src/ng/location.js#L45), breaking our legacy apps.

Commenting these 2 lines of code seems to work for us but I'm guessing they must be there for a reason. On the other hand, modifying our apps will break all the links to these pages (http://site.com/section/#!info -> http://site.com/section/#/!info), internals (easy to miss some) & externals (can't even change them). Thoughts?

[btford]

This is a duplicate of #4608. Closing. Feel free to join the discussion in the other issue.