How do you use Codespaces with tools like Playwright/Cypress?

[alexbjorlig]

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I'm trying to set up GitHub Codespaces for our team. My objective is to make it really easy to onboard new developers, so there is no need to "fight" with any setup - including e2e/component testing.

If I run Playwright with --debug in a container, I get this message: Looks like you launched a headed browser without having a XServer running.

What steps would you recommend here 🤔?

[KartikM123]

Hi @alexbjorlig ! Thanks for reaching out!

Do you mind going into more detail on how you run playright locally versus what happens when you run it in a codespace? Based on initial investigation, I would recommend looking up how to run a XServer in your codespace; something like XQuartz may help!

[alexbjorlig]

Ok, so I recorded a (18seconds) video to give some context:

Playwright_Github_codespace_.trimmed.mp4

Is this not something many developers do? I'm surprised I did not find more information about it when using Google..

[spenserblack]

This is for CI, but it might work in your case, too: https://playwright.dev/docs/ci#running-headed

Basically, try using xvfb when running playwright.

[alexbjorlig]

Do you think something like this I found on Google could work with playwright?

[spenserblack]

I'm not familiar with using desktop-lite, but the link you posted did lead me to this issue that appears to be relevant.

[sayurionishi]

hi @alexbjorlig , have you solved this issue? I have also encountered this issue. I was able to run my tests without an error using xvfb-run but the browser where the tests are running doesn't show

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[alexbjorlig]

I don't really think we nee dmore information here? The question still stands - why/how do we effectively debug playwright tests in codespaces/devcontainers

[lyzhng]

I’m also surprised that there isn’t much coverage on this topic. Currently facing a similar issue.

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