User talk:DavidBrooks

Hi David, do you want any bug reports on Phabricator? 01:32, 16 May 2026 (UTC) Neils51 (talk) 01:32, 16 May 2026 (UTC)Reply

Sure, but ping me here too at least for now. I don't check phab regularly; I only got into this at first to fix things that were bothering me. I hope I didn't introduce a regression! David Brooks (talk) 03:30, 16 May 2026 (UTC)Reply

OK, thanks. Sorted it. Need to run the updater manually (and permit it) before it will work from the <Help> option. Might get a few people! Neils51 (talk) 11:22, 16 May 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Neils51: good point. I've updated the Talk Page, using the Properties method. I'll edit the main instructions asap but have to run now. David Brooks (talk) 15:01, 16 May 2026 (UTC)Reply

I just wanted to say great work and I wanted to let you know I am in the process of converting my fork of AWB to .NET 8 and then a complete redesign. If you want, I'll post a message here and let you know when I am done...in about 6-9 months probably. Cheers! ~2026-37320-76 (talk) 00:43, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hey, good luck. Are you going to use .NET Forms or a different UI? I tried converting it to Framework WPF, but it took a lot of work because a lot of code is tightly integrated with Forms logic and I only got the main window, login, edit and save working. Not that I want to discourage you! ETA: keep an eye on the source. I just committed three performance improvements and there are some minor bugs I want to tackle. The two "official" contributors pop up occasionally.

BTW, did you mean to post logged out? David Brooks (talk) 15:07, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, I don't edit Wikipedia much. No time or desire. I just want to say thanks for your efforts. To answer your other questions, I mirror the edits done on Sourceforge when appropriate and I agree the migration will not be a trivial undertaking. I also understand why it hasn't been done since there are a fairly large number of users using outdated Windows OS's that would no longer work. Since I'm mostly doing this upgrade for my personal use that's not really an issue. I figure, as I joked it will take several months of part time but careful, methodical, pick and shovel work. Right now, I am just upgrading to .NET8 but my plan is to further get it to .NET 9 at least after that and then update the forms and some other upgrades such as a more modular design; less focus on Wikipedia; a greatly expanded module builder, etc. I plan to use Avalonia UI for the forms replacement and already have some mockups for the replacement forms. Once I have implemented a reasonable percentage of these updates, I plan to do a rebrand, while giving credit to the devs here and the AWB core. Not to diminish credit, simply to minimize confusion if anyone else does decide to use it. Kinda like JWB, based on AWB but its own separate entity. Cheers! ~2026-37320-76 (talk) 22:40, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

BTW, I may have found a memory leak in ApiEdit. If you look at about lines 361-403, if I am reading it correctly, every time CreateRequest() runs, AWB appears to be adding another delegate to the same callback list which could create a steadily growing delegate list as each HTTPS request invokes the callback more times. Maybe the callback should be registered once during initialization, instead of once per request. But, I admit, I may be misreading it. ~2026-37320-76 (talk) 01:01, 2 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Looks like you are right. The internal member _invocationList of ServerCertificateValidationCallback is an array that gradually grows. When needed, customXertificateValidation is called multiple times in a row. Fortunately (or not) it always returns true, so basically it's a no-op. It looks like "Joe" (almost 15 years ago) intended to go back to it later.

In general, the fix for this situation is to remove the delegate before adding it. But ServicePointManager is a static class and its properties only need be set once per app-domain, so it apparently only needs to be set in a static constructor for the class (it's a factory class).

The callback was last edited by Sam Reed in March 2012. I guess it's surprising nobody else spotted it. Did you find it or did you set AI (eg Claude) onto it?

Can you phabricate a bug? David Brooks (talk) 03:12, 2 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

I started a static constructor and CoPilot immediately suggested:

// This is required for some Wikimedia sites, which have a broken certificate chain
ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback += (sender, cert, chain, error) => true;

I have no idea where it got that from, but it's something of an explanation, and let's hope those chains aren't broken any more. I don't use CoPilot explicitly, but do have suggestions turned on. I'll add a more specific comment. David Brooks (talk) 15:49, 2 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

I'm glad I was reading that right after all. Sorta, I kinda wish I wasn't to be honest. Let me say this will be my last reply here. If I keep going the edit police are going to show up and that's not what I am trying to achieve. I wanted to say thanks for all your hard work and let you know it really is appreciated. If you would like to continue to collaborate, just following the forks at GITHUB for AWB and you'll figure out who I am pretty fast and whether you want to continue.

In response to your question, no AI was used. I was manually reviewing the code for various different terms for things that need to be updated either before or after the move to .NET 8 including, WebRequest; HttpWebRequest; HttpWebResponse; WebClient and ServicePoint(?:Manager)?. That's how I found this and some other lesser issues.

In addition to that, ApiEdits needs a lot of love. I found quite a few things there that need improvement including at least 2 possible security problems relating to how it saves login/token information during certain failure events and accepting every possible kind of TLS certificate, including expired, self-signed, mismatched-host, or otherwise invalid. So might be worth a close look at that as there appear to be other issues with that beyond leaky memory.

I also wonder what Wikimedia sites have a broken certificate chains. This seems like its referring to Wikimedia archaeology from the early days. I wouldn't be shocked to find the AI dug up that fossil in a 10 or 15 year old Reddit post or something. I'm not a WMF fan and even I doubt any of their sites have this problem in the modern ecosystem. Might be worth asking Reedy, he would likely know. Take care! ~2026-37320-76 (talk) 20:36, 2 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Understood, and good luck, and thanks for the acknowledgment. Serious maintenance on the code ended a while back; most people seem satisfied unless something blows up. I first got involved because nobody seemed serious about addressing the "different IP" login flow while I was traveling a year ago, and the constant changes in usage throttling. I'm still mostly just reacting to the squeaky wheels.

I'm sure the certificate problems are long gone; I suspect that happened as part of the HTTP/HTTPS switch. But I'm taking an "ain't broke" to cleaning up the logic itself. In fact, I think the leak is only one additional object reference per iteration, all to the same object, so it would take millions for it to be noticed. Same with the repeated calls to the delegate. But it should have always been only set up once.

I don't think overuse of a talk page will bring trouble. I've recently been involved in a couple of marathons! David Brooks (talk) 22:07, 2 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

ETA - having said all that, Rob just checked in four changes. David Brooks (talk) 22:13, 2 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Greetings Dave, I know I said I wasn't going to post again but I wanted to let you know I got AWB to NET 8 today. Several months sooner than I thought I would. It took a couple hundred pre migration edits and I still have a few things to work through but it works, with the exception of the module builder. That's really the big sticking point but I'll get that working in the next couple weeks. Also, if you review my change log in GIT for the last week, it resolves about 75% of the exceptions reported on Phabricator. Cheers! ~2026-37320-76 (talk) 00:32, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

That's pretty amazing. I haven't even looked seriously at the phabricator backlog for ages. I also admit I haven't searched for you on github; if you could send me a link I'd appreciate it. Use email if you prefer. David Brooks (talk) 04:29, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I'm pretty sure this is going to stir up some drama but here you go. As you'll see I have done over 440 commits past what the main AWB GIT branch has. I didn't do it at first but over the last couple weeks I tried to label things so they were clear what was done and to what file.

Here is a link to the Development track up to the branch for .NET8: AWB Development

Here is the branch I created when I moved to .NET8: .NET8 AWB branch

I'll be doing a lot more over the next couple months and as I do I'll create new branches or at least tags (ie. .NET9; .NET10; rebrand, etc.). As I move farther away from the base fork the changes will be less relevant to the .NET framework version of AWB, but up to know at least, most of it may be worth reviewing. Feel free to post a discussion on the GIT project, but I suspect my ability to post here may be coming to an end. Cheers! ~2026-37320-76 (talk) 22:27, 16 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

By "main AWB git branch" I assume you mean a repo that you keep up to date with the SVN master. I have one of my own that also has SVN infrastructure so I can easily sync it.

Anyway, good luck and thanks for identifying yourself. BTW, we usually don't bother with spelling, especially Americanization (the initial work was mainly done by Brits), although sometimes I'll slip a correction in if it's close to another change.

RL is really taking a lot of my time right now. I'm still looking at ways of further optimizing large list performance; otherwise instead of updating AWB I'm actually using it on my own long-lasting project of being a gnome on Wikipedia when I get the time.

Cheers David Brooks (talk) 23:09, 17 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

That's a fair criticism for the spelling changes. Since I think it very likely the WMF or WP community, who are the largest users of AWB, will not allow the rebranded/updated/modernized version of AWB I am making anyway, I mostly consider the upgrade for myself. It's possible in time others will start using it, but that's not really certain. Since I use American English I was changing things to match that. Having said that, my intention is to make the modernized version very appealing and useful to everyone who wishes to use it with many new features, improved GUI and much more flexibility. Have a great weekend! ~2026-37320-76 (talk) 17:53, 18 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

So long as you are a respectful user of the servers, I doubt "allow" comes into it! Let the market decide... David Brooks (talk) 19:04, 18 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

We'll see. There are people who would rather burn the project down than see anything from me be used but time will tell. I'm still a couple months at least from a finished solution so as they say in Panem, “May the fates be ever in your favor” ~2026-37320-76 (talk) 19:54, 18 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Greetings David, I thought you might be interested that I got my fork of AWB to .NET10. It took a bunch of work under the hood but except for 2 issues everything works as well or better (it's quite a bit faster loading) than the current version. The only 2 issues, are that I had to remove the plugin capability temporarily and I had to do a full self contained package, so the new package is about 250 MB but can run without installing any .NET frameworks or other infrastructure. The next update will have the really exciting changes in a couple months or sooner. Cheers! ~2026-37320-76 (talk) 22:49, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Myleene Klass, a link pointing to the disambiguation page Classic FM was added.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 22:56, 20 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

 Done David Brooks (talk) 15:51, 2 July 2026 (UTC)Reply