Application.InitalizeClient fails to complete

What I’m trying to do

I’m trying to run a basic test with Jest. I have two basic helpers that make the electron path and make the application:

function getElectronPath() {
  let electronPath = path.join(
    __dirname,
    "..",
    "node_modules",
    ".bin",
    "electron"
  );
  if (process.platform === "win32") {
    electronPath += ".cmd";
  }
  return electronPath;
}

function getApplication(buildPath) {
  const options = {};
  options.path = getElectronPath();
  options.args = [buildPath];
  if (process.env.CI) {
    options.startTimeout = 30000;
  }
  return new Application(options);
}

Then, I have a really simple test that opens up the electron app then counts how many windows there are:

import { getApplication } from "./helper.js";
import path from "path";

describe("Aurora", () => {
  let app;

  beforeEach(() => {
    const BUILD_PATH = path.resolve(__dirname, "..");
    app = getApplication(BUILD_PATH);

    return app.start();
  });

  afterEach(() => {
    if (app && app.isRunning()) {
      return app.stop();
    }
  });

  test("It shows initial window", () => {
    return app.client.waitUntilWindowLoaded().getWindowCount().then(count => {
      expect(count).toBe(1);
    });
  });
});

The Problem

When I try to run this, I’ll get an error that says that the promise on app.start() in the beforeEach() call failed to complete:

Aurora › It shows initial window

    Timeout - Async callback was not invoked within timeout specified by jasmine.DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_INTERVAL.

      at pTimeout (node_modules/jest-jasmine2/build/queueRunner.js:53:21)
      at Timeout.callback [as _onTimeout] (node_modules/jsdom/lib/jsdom/browser/Window.js:523:19)
      at ontimeout (timers.js:488:11)
      at tryOnTimeout (timers.js:323:5)
      at Timer.listOnTimeout (timers.js:283:5)

What I’ve tried so far.

1. Logging Application.prototype.start()

Inside my node_modules/spectron/lib/application.js file, I put a few console.log’s in the Application.prototype.start call like so:

Application.prototype.start = function () {
  var self = this
  return self.exists()
    .then(function () { console.log("start chrome"); return self.startChromeDriver() })
    .then(function () { console.log("create client"); return self.createClient() })
    .then(function () { console.log("api init"); return self.api.initialize() })
    .then(function () { console.log("timeouts"); return self.client.timeouts('script', self.waitTimeout) })
    .then(function () { console.log("running"); self.running = true })
    .then(function () { console.log("return'd"); return self })
}

That printed out only:

start chrome
create client

So I know that it’s never getting to the self.api.initialize() call. Which means the problem is in createClient

2. Checking createClient

Since createClient doesn’t seem to have any promise calls until the end, I figured most of that must be executing. So to prove that, I put a console.log in the start of initializeClient to prove that we were at least getting there:

Application.prototype.initializeClient = function(resolve, reject) {
  console.log("initializeClient gets called");
  var maxTries = 10;
  var tries = 0;
  // ...
};

Sure enough, I’ll get a message that says initializeClient gets called.

3. Checking initializeClient

Inside of initializeClient there’s an init function that calls WebdriverIO’s client.init function:

self.client.init().then(resolve, function(error)

To see where this was going, I checked to see if the function was being called and if it errorred:

  var init = function() {
    console.log("Starting an init function!");
    tries++;
    self.client.init().then(resolve, function(error) {
      console.log("There is an error in init!!");
      if (tries >= maxTries) {
        error.message =
          "Client initialization failed after " + tries + " attempts: ";
        error.message += error.type + " " + error.message;
        reject(error);
      } else {
        global.setTimeout(init, 250);
      }
    });
  };

I got a Starting an init function but no There is an error in init!! so I can assume that client.init got stuck somewhere.

4. Getting lost in WebdriverIO

So I went to go read webdriver’s client.init code and I got a little lost here. It seems like /session call must have gotten lost somewhere.

return this.requestHandler.create({
        path: '/session',
        method: 'POST'
    }, {
        desiredCapabilities: this.desiredCapabilities
    })

But if it had some error, wouldn’t it log it or throw it somehow? Isn’t this supposed to be running locally too? So there shouldn’t be latency. I’m not completely sure what’s up.

Main Questions

Has anyone ever experienced anything like this? Does it have something to do with running on Jest? Have I made some simple mistake early on?

• Thanks in advance ❤️

[ericyahhh]

@kontrollanten Thank you very much – I’ll try that out now.

[UberMouse]

I stumbled across this issue in my search for a solution to a similar problem. I’m unclear if other people on this issue were having their Electron app start up or not, but I was so none of the suggestions seemed applicable as Spectron clearly had the right Electron path and the app was not throwing an error during boot.

I eventually tracked the problem down to this issue in the Electron repository. All I needed to fix it was to pass the --remote-debugging-port=12209 argument as part of the chromeDriverArgs and it started working fine.

Hope this saves someone else the day I lost hunting this down 😬