Playwright test.only

I ran into an issue with test.only in Playwright in a work project.

Error: focused item found in the --forbid-only mode:

In this repository I am trying to reproduce the issue.

I set up both the work repository and this one by following the Getting Started guide on https://playwright.dev with the exception that the work repository is a monorepo that uses PNPM and I do not yet know if that makes a difference.

https://playwright.dev/docs/intro

1. npm init playwright@latest (I am using Node 20.2.0 and NPM 9.6.6)

   • TypeScript because that's what the work repository is using

     I don't know if the same issue reproduces in JavaScript.

   • tests as the directory for the tests

     In the work repository, I moved them straight to the directory root, but I do not think this matters. I will play around with this if I gain a suspicion it might play a role.

   • No to adding the GitHub Actions workflow

     I do make use of it in the work repository, but this problem happens in the IDE not in the workflow runtime so this should be unnecessary.

   • Install Playwright browsers automatically

     The workflow repository does it too and the workflow updates them there.

   At this point npx playwright test works successfully when I add test.todo to one of the generated sample tests.

2. Remove the non-Chromium projects

   The reproduction should be unrelated to the browser at hand so let's simplify the setup.

3. Change playwright.config.ts to look for tests in the repository directory root instead of in tests.

   • Change testDir from ./tests to ..

   Maybe this does play a role after all? Looks like that's not the case, npx playwright test still runs the sole test.

4. Be confused. Next step: let's try to extract the reproduction out from the work repository instead.

   I will replace this repository with the result of that if I succeed.

   It is possible I just need to bump Playwright version in that repository?

The result

This message was printed because I had CI=1 set (as I was debugging a CI run issue) and did not realize that would set forbidOnly mode in the configuration file playwright.config.ts to be enabled (because I was using the initialized configuration file and did not take time to study all of the options) and as a result my use of test.only was explicitly forbidden.

I've opened a PR with a suggestion on how to improve this error message:

microsoft/playwright#23146