[🐛 Bug]: 404s when downloading Chromedriver for an unsupported version of Electron about webdriverio

[seanpoulter]

Ah, yea, for ChromeDriver < 115 it'd need to download from the old URL. See https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads.

[christian-bromann]

I'm not sure how using the Chromedriver service helps here?

The Chromedriver service would allow to download a Chromedriver version before v115 of Chrome. You could use it within the onPrepare hook to download Chromedriver if the Electron version is v25 or lower.

I will simply update the Electron service docs to specify that Electron versions lower than 26 will require manual configuration of Chromedriver.

I think this would be the best since there aren't many Electron v25 devs out there anymore.

[christian-bromann]

Thanks @goosewobbler 👍

[seanpoulter]

I'm not sure how using the Chromedriver service helps here?

The Chromedriver service would allow to download a Chromedriver version before v115 of Chrome. You could use it within the onPrepare hook to download Chromedriver if the Electron version is v25 or lower.

FWIW: Here's an over-complicated example. I set up the onPrepare hook to download ChromeDriver for Linux ARM64 from the Electron releases on GitHub instead of from ChromeDriver or Chrome for Testing. It does a bit extra since it's for the VS Code service. 🤷

https://github.com/seanpoulter/wdio-vscode-cucumber-example/blob/main/test/wdio.conf.ts#L199-L301

[christian-bromann]

We have introduced Chrome for Testing to manage Chrome and Chromedriver downloads. Chrome for Testing starts with Chrome 115 and up, therefor it is not possible to use a lower version number, except using the Chromedriver service which you can still do.

Could you give the wdio-chromedriver-service a shot and see it manages the driver for you?

[goosewobbler]

Apologies, I think I misunderstood something regarding Chrome for Testing and conflated their CD support level with Electron's rolling support. So the lowest CD version available on CfT is fixed at 115, which corresponds to Electron 26. This is less of an issue as before long, most Electron users will be off v25 and lower.

If with this we are saying that given the pace of Chromedriver / Electron releases, adding a download fallback for Chromedriver < 115 to WDIO is not worth it, I will simply update the Electron service docs to specify that Electron versions lower than 26 will require manual configuration of Chromedriver.

I'm not sure how using the Chromedriver service helps here?

[goosewobbler]

Thanks for the clarification, I'll close this then - Electron service docs update here.

[goosewobbler]

Thanks for the example, there was something similar in the Electron service before WDIO started handling CD downloads, we were using @electron/get though: https://github.com/webdriverio-community/wdio-electron-service/blob/4.3.0/src/launcher.ts