Maniphest T403856

Searching while previewing an edit hangs Chrome tabs
Open, Needs TriagePublicPRODUCTION ERROR
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Description

Steps to replicate the issue (include links if applicable):

Edit an article
Preview it
Attempt to use browser search

What happens?:

The tab completely locks up.

What should have happened instead?:

The tab doesn't lock up.

Details

Related Changes in Gerrit:

	Subject	Repo	Branch	Lines +/-
	Revert "Edit: Split footer lists into columns"	mediawiki/core	wmf/1.45.0-wmf.17	+0 -1
	Revert "Edit: Split footer lists into columns"	mediawiki/core	master	+0 -6

Customize query in gerrit

Related Objects

Mentioned In: T401066: List of templates used should be presented in multi-column format
Mentioned Here: T401066: List of templates used should be presented in multi-column format

Event Timeline

DLynch created this task.Sep 5 2025, 7:13 PM

Restricted Application changed the subtype of this task from "Bug Report" to "Production Error". · View Herald TranscriptSep 5 2025, 7:13 PM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald Transcript

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Searching_on_a_previewed_page_crashes_browser

Git bisect suggests it's caused by https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/1181798 from T401066

DLynch mentioned this in T401066: List of templates used should be presented in multi-column format.Sep 5 2025, 7:15 PM

DLynch renamed this task from Searching while previewing an edit crashes browsers to Searching while previewing an edit hangs Chrome tabs.Sep 5 2025, 7:17 PM

Change #1185186 had a related patch set uploaded (by DLynch; author: DLynch):

[mediawiki/core@master] Revert "Edit: Split footer lists into columns"

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1185186

gerritbot added a project: Patch-For-Review.Sep 5 2025, 7:22 PM

I had to revert two commits at once there, but only one of them made it out into the release branch last week, so a completely separate revert patch will be needed specifically for a backport if we do one.

TNstringray in the linked thread reports it happening without needing any user interaction at all, about 3-4 second after they preview changes, but I cannot reproduce this. I think it's probably something non-default-gadget related.

Change #1185186 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/core@master] Revert "Edit: Split footer lists into columns"

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1185186

Change #1185192 had a related patch set uploaded (by DLynch; author: DLynch):

[mediawiki/core@wmf/1.45.0-wmf.17] Revert "Edit: Split footer lists into columns"

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1185192

matmarex subscribed.Sep 5 2025, 7:59 PM

ReleaseTaggerBot added a project: MW-1.45-notes (1.45.0-wmf.18; 2025-09-09).Sep 5 2025, 8:00 PM

@Ryasmeen @EstherAmoo flagging this as it might be good to do a Root Cause Analysis on this since it escaped all the way to production and now has to be redone. An initial glance makes me wonder if we could write an automated test for it?

Change #1185192 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/core@wmf/1.45.0-wmf.17] Revert "Edit: Split footer lists into columns"

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1185192

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-09-05T20:17:17Z] <kemayo@deploy1003> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1185192|Revert "Edit: Split footer lists into columns" (T401066 T403856)]]

Honestly, the steps involved in triggering this are simple but are also sufficiently niche that I'm not shocked nobody thought to test them. I have a hard time viewing this as anything other than a Chromium bug that we accidentally stumbled into.

That said, a headless browser test for this is presumably doable (I'm assuming there's a way to make Selenium activate the browser search). If we already had one that tested that searching for text successfully un-hides the collapsed footer, which was existing behavior, it'd have caught this. (But since it requires being the preview state, we might not have thought to specifically test that.)

DLynch claimed this task.Sep 5 2025, 8:19 PM

DLynch added projects: Editing-team, Essential-Work.

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-09-05T20:23:18Z] <kemayo@deploy1003> kemayo: Backport for [[gerrit:1185192|Revert "Edit: Split footer lists into columns" (T401066 T403856)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.

Maintenance_bot removed a project: Patch-For-Review.Sep 5 2025, 8:30 PM

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-09-05T20:32:48Z] <kemayo@deploy1003> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1185192|Revert "Edit: Split footer lists into columns" (T401066 T403856)]] (duration: 15m 31s)