No reference directory and no screenshots being created.

Hi,

I followed your css-tricks article today and really wanted to get BackstopJS running but came across lots of problems doing a vanilla install.

1. Failed with error code 1 - I found another issue on here tha suggested it was because of python. I tried running phantomjs and it said python wasn’t installed, but your article/docs make no mention of installing python, so I installed python.

2. Needed to globally install phantomjs and casperjs to quash another error.

3. Finally got it running with no errors and it says it’s completed successfully but it hasn’t opened any browsers or generated any screenshots. Here is the output using a vanilla install and yout default backstop.json file from genConfig.

C:\Dropbox\Git\portal-test\node_modules\backstopjs (master) (garris@1.3.5) λ npm run reference

backstopjs@1.3.5 reference C:\Dropbox\Git\portal-test\node_modules\backstopjs gulp reference

BackstopJS Config loaded at location C:\Dropbox\Git\portal-test\backstop.json [16:01:15] Using gulpfile C:\Dropbox\Git\portal-test\node_modules\backstopjs\gulpfile.js [16:01:15] Starting ‘clean’… bitmaps_reference was cleaned. [16:01:15] Starting ‘bless’… [16:01:15] Finished ‘bless’ after 4.08 ms [16:01:15] Finished ‘clean’ after 13 ms [16:01:15] Starting ‘reference’… gulp.run() has been deprecated. Use task dependencies or gulp.watch task triggering instead. [16:01:15] Starting ‘init’… [16:01:15] Finished ‘init’ after 3.84 μs [16:01:15] Starting ‘test’…

Generating reference files.

Running CasperJS with: [ ‘capture/genBitmaps.js’ ] [16:01:15] Finished ‘test’ after 12 ms reference has run. [16:01:15] Finished ‘reference’ after 27 ms CasperJS: C:\Dropbox\Git\portal-test\node_modules\backstopjs {git}{hg} {lamb} “C:\Dropbox\Git\portal-test\node_modules\backstopjs\node_modules.bin\node.exe” “C:\Dropbox\Git\portal-test\node_modules\backstopjs\node_modules.bin..\phantomjs\bin\phantomjs” C:\Dropbox\Git\portal-test\node_modules\casperjs\bin\bootstrap.js --casper-path=C:\Dropbox\Git\portal-test\node_modules\casperjs --cli capture/genBitmaps.js

Bitmap file generation completed.

Run $ npm run test to generate diff report.

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I’ve never used phantom or casper before so debugging this on my own is going to be really hard and I’d still like to get this working as it looks like a great tool. Any idea what’s going on?

[JonCognioDigital]

It’s time to party @serhansolo because guess what? It worked!

I moved my project to the root of the c:\ drive and Yep, it produced the screenshots. I also need to work out how to remove spaces from a Dropbox folder (when you have work and business accounts it puts a space in automatically)

I also have a problem with slimerJS now that it is running because it seems incompatible with my Firefox version.

But that seems like a Slimer problem, not a Backstop problem.

I cna’t thank everybody enough for helping me sort this out. If Backstop is as useful as I think it’s going to be then I’m going to save myself hours of torturous CSS debugging.

[JonCognioDigital]

There is indeed a space in one of my folder names but it’s my Dropbox folder so I can’t easily change it 😦

I’ll see if I can and report back.