This is a rough guide to setting up browser testing through Selenium on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), aka Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. It assumes the following environment:
- Windows 10, running WSL
- A Ruby dev environment, running inside WSL
- Code that we want to test using a web driver, in this case Selenium, with a Capybara and RSpec test framework
The coding project folders are stored in the main Windows filing hierarchy and accessed via dev/mnt, but that makes no real difference to development and testing other than making it possible to edit the code using a GUI based editor within Windows.
The problem with browser testing in WSL is that it relies on opening and controlling a web browser, and browsers don’t work on WSL at present as it deliberately doesn’t include X Windows or some other GUI manager - it’s meant to be command line after all. So while you can apt-get firefox, trying to actually run it isn’t going to work.