title: Including reference links in markdown as bullet point list on GitHub
body: <p>Currently I'm using this markdown text inside the README.md file of a project on GitHub:</p>
  
  <pre><code>See the docs of [testthat][3] on how to write unit tests.
  
  Links
  -----
  
  - http://www.rstudio.com/products/rpackages/devtools/
  - https://github.com/hadley/testthat
  - http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/tests.html
  
  ---
  
  [1]: http://www.rstudio.com/products/rpackages/devtools/
  [2]: https://github.com/hadley/testthat
  [3]: http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/tests.html
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I don't like this duplication, but I don't see what choice I have. If I remove the explicit bullet point lists, then GitHub won't display the reference links. If I remove the reference links, then GitHub shows the bullet point list (of course), but the embedded links like "testthat" above don't work.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a better way than duplicating? What am I missing?</p>