How to install a frozen version of Firefox for your Selenium tests

Updated . Posted . Visible to the public.

Whenever Firefox updates, all your Cucumber features that use Selenium break. This is annoying.

In order to remedy this, version 0.5.0 of our geordi Show archive.org snapshot gem comes with a script that helps you create an unchanging version of Firefox for your Selenium tests. In particular, this new copy of Firefox will have the following properties:

  • It won't update itself with a newer version
  • It can co-exist with your regular Firefox installation (which you can update at will)
  • It will use a profile separate from the one you use for regular Firefox browsing
  • It will not try to re-use existing Firefox windows
  • It will automatically be used for your Selenium scenarios if you run your Cucumber using the cuc script from the geordi Show archive.org snapshot gem.
  • It will live in /opt/firefox-for-selenium

Installation

Install the newest version of the geordi gem by saying:

sudo gem install geordi

After installation, you can setup a separate Firefox copy for Selenium like this:

setup-firefox-for-selenium

Once the setup process has completed, you have two Firefoxes: One for Selenium tests, one for regular browsing. You can now update your regular Firefox without fear of Selenium breaking.

Usage

When you start a Cucumber feature, you need to tell it which Firefox to use for Selenium tests. If you call Cucumber using the cuc script (also part of the geordi gem), this will happen automatically (because it's magic).

If you don't like to use cuc and prefer to run cucumber manually, you can tell Cucumber to use your frozen Firefox copy like this:

PATH=/opt/firefox-for-selenium:$PATH cucumber features/foo.feature

Issues

When you get the following error:

./firefox-bin: 1: Syntax error: "(" unexpected

... then you have a 32 bit Linux but downloaded a 64 bit Firefox build.

Henning Koch
Last edit
Keywords
freeze
License
Source code in this card is licensed under the MIT License.
Posted by Henning Koch to makandra dev (2011-09-08 09:25)