LinkIT#editPageLink is flickering

The functional test org.xwiki.blocknote.test.ui.AllIT$NestedLinkIT#editPageLink fails intermittently on ci.xwiki.org.

Affected tests

• org.xwiki.blocknote.test.ui.AllIT$NestedLinkIT#editPageLink

Branches: master, stable-18.8.x, stable-18.7.x.

Frequency

Develocity, 28 days to 2026-09-19: 13 failures in 240 executions (5.4%), in 5 of 15 configurations. The failure was already happening at the start of that window, so it may predate it.

The failures group into 4 distinct signatures. The two largest are below.

F1 - StaleElementReferenceException (7 of 13 failures, Chrome only, p=0.0002)

org.openqa.selenium.StaleElementReferenceException: stale element reference: stale element not found in the current frame
  (Session info: chrome=153.0.8010.47)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorCodec.decode(ErrorCodec.java:169)
	at org.xwiki.blocknote.test.po.BlockNoteLinkModal.setSuggestBoxQueryAndSelectSuggestion(BlockNoteLinkModal.java:260)
	at org.xwiki.blocknote.test.po.BlockNoteLinkModal.setPageReference(BlockNoteLinkModal.java:110)
	at org.xwiki.blocknote.test.po.BlockNoteLinkModal.setPageTargetAndSubmit(BlockNoteLinkModal.java:122)
	at org.xwiki.blocknote.test.ui.LinkIT.editPageLink(LinkIT.java:382)

F4 - NoSuchElementException (most recent failure, 2026-09-19)

org.openqa.selenium.NoSuchElementException: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"css selector","selector":"[data-test='linkSubmit']"}
  (Session info: chrome=153.0.8010.47)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorCodec.decode(ErrorCodec.java:169)
	at org.xwiki.blocknote.test.po.BlockNoteLinkModal.submit(BlockNoteLinkModal.java:198)
	at org.xwiki.blocknote.test.po.BlockNoteLinkModal.setPageTargetAndSubmit(BlockNoteLinkModal.java:123)
	at org.xwiki.blocknote.test.ui.LinkIT.editPageLink(LinkIT.java:382)

Analysis

Both signatures fail on the same line, LinkIT.editPageLink:382, i.e. the setPageTargetAndSubmit() call, and both point at BlockNoteLinkModal: the link modal appears to re-render after a page suggestion is selected, so the page object's element handle goes stale (F1) or the submit button is not yet in the DOM when it is looked up (F4). That suggests a missing wait in the page object rather than a product defect.

The fix should stay inside the page object - not an assertion, an expected value or a timeout change.

Verifying a fix

At the failure rate seen in the affected configurations, about 19 consecutive clean runs are needed before the failure can be called gone; the 2 clean runs since the last failure are worth p=0.73, i.e. no evidence either way. xwiki/scripts/xwiki-it-repeat.mjs on chrome / mysql latest / tomcat 11-jdk25 is the configuration to reproduce on.

References

• Build scan of the most recent failure: https://community.develocity.cloud/s/oymbz3digznfo
• CI build: https://ci.xwiki.org/job/XWiki/job/xwiki-platform/job/master/8958
• Same module and the same modal-timing family: XWIKI-24749

Filed automatically by the daily CI check.