Cypress GUI

[silentlight]

Hello,

Is it possible to run Cypress GUI from inside the container?
My development environment is dockerized but I would still love to use your brilliant GUI.

Thanks

[brian-mann]

Yes but you'll need to install VNC and connect in order to "see" what's going on. It' won't be very fun trying to use the browser and develop there though. :-/

Until Cypress supports launching a remote browser we don't really recommend it. Instead it makes more sense for you to host your server / code in Docker, but just expose that server to the outside world and then use your normally installed browser to connect to it.

[silentlight]

Thank you for fast response!

If thats not a problem, I will need a little guidance from you on this one.
When I start my dev environment using docker-compose up my web app is available under localhost:3000. If I understood it correctly, I will need to create a new service inside my docker-compose.yml for which endpoint will be cypress open. Then I will need to expose some port and I will be able to connect to Cypress GUI via my browser. Is that correct?

[silentlight]

I made some progress, but I still have problems with this setup.
I set the port in cypress.json to 34611. Then I exposed that port in my docker-compose.yml file. After running cypress open on the container witn my web app, I navigate in the browser to http://localhost:34611 and I see a page with this message:
Whoops, we can't run your tests. This browser was not launched through Cypress. Tests cannot run.

What am I missing?

[silentlight]

In addition, in my docker container log I find this:

Xlib:  extension "RANDR" missing on display ":99".
Xlib:  extension "RANDR" missing on display ":99".
libudev: udev_has_devtmpfs: name_to_handle_at on /dev: Operation not permitted

[brian-mann]

@silentlight the Xlib stuff is nothing - its normal part of XVFB working.

You actually won't be able to get this working I'm afraid. Cypress itself has to launch your browser in a very specific way - with flags and a custom profile else it won't work. Until Cypress has the ability to launch remote browsers not installed directly on the OS this won't work - sorry.

What I was suggesting was actually the inverse - don't try to run cypress open through your Docker container. Just install Cypress on the host operating system - and then just expose your webserver from docker to the host via port mapping. Then you'll be able to cy.visit and everything will just work.

[cyborgmarina]

There seems to be some security issues regarding running X inside a docker container, but you can do it with Firefox for instance:

https://github.com/splattael/docker-firefox
Maybe just by replacing "firefox" with "cypress open" it would work? I don't know.

There's also this repo that solves some of the security issues I mentioned, but I haven't tried.
https://github.com/mviereck/x11docker

[bahmutov]

I have done experiments running VNC from Docker so you can look into the container running Cypress here https://github.com/cypress-io/browser-connect-experiment but this is tricky.

[omaressameldin]

@bahmutov this link you posted is not working :( also can someone tell me how to run cy.visit() from the stanalone gui app?

[bahmutov]

@omaressameldin good catch, repo was private, I just made it public

[omaressameldin]

@bahmutov thanks :)

[omaressameldin]

also i ended up doing it this way which is simple just run docker using these options and it works
docker run -it -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix -e DISPLAY=unix$DISPLAY [cypress_container] npx cypress open and if you get this error No protocol specified you just run this in your host machine xhost local:root This will only work ofcourse if your image already has the node modules installed and everything

[prescottprue]

I was able to get this working with @omaressameldin. It would be awesome to see a guide for doing this.

x11 is pretty annoying to deal with, so it would be awesome to have access to the server that is hosting application (so that the port could be exposed)

[walkerrandolphsmith]

@brian-mann is there a ticket for supporting launching a remote browser and is it on the cypress team's roadmap? If not is there any information that you can provide that may help the community issue a pr and make it happen?

[seyfer]

@walkerrandolphsmith yes I have added one cypress-io/cypress#5985

[gaugau3000]

In addition of the answer of @omaressameldin

also i ended up doing it this way which is simple just run docker using these options and it works
docker run -it -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix -e DISPLAY=unix$DISPLAY [cypress_container] npx cypress open and if you get this error No protocol specified you just run this in your host machine xhost local:root This will only work ofcourse if your image already has the node modules installed and everything

if you are on chromium you should need to give this extra environment variables to make it work (contrib from @milesrichardson) .

docker run ... \
 -e QT_X11_NO_MITSHM=1 \
 -e _X11_NO_MITSHM=1 \
 -e _MITSHM=0 \

[bchenSyd]

is there a ticket for supporting launching a remote browser and is it on the cypress team's roadmap? If not is there any information that you can provide that may help the community issue a pr and make it happen?

inject scripts in a remote browser.. might involve setting up another nodejs sever on the target machine