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Robot Framework Electron & VS Code

Logs and troubleshooting

Logs of a run

Section titled “Logs of a run”

Besides Robot Framework’s own log.html, the output directory holds playwright-log.txt. It is the log of the Browser library’s Node.js side and shows its calls to Playwright, with their errors.

VS Code instance directories

Section titled “VS Code instance directories”

Every instance that Open VS Code starts gets its own folder vscode/<n> in the output directory, numbered from 1, with its user-data and extensions directories. The folders stay after the run, so VS Code’s own logs can be read afterwards:

  • vscode/<n>/user-data/logs/<timestamp>/main.log for the main process,
  • vscode/<n>/user-data/logs/<timestamp>/window1/ for the window, with the extension host’s log in exthost/exthost.log.

When a run starts, the library removes the vscode folder that earlier runs left in the same output directory, the way Browser cleans its own output folders. Two runs that use the same output directory at the same time would remove each other’s folders, so give parallel runs their own output directories. pabot does that already.

Troubleshooting

Section titled “Troubleshooting”

The Electron binary behaves like Node.js. Runs started from VS Code, for example from its terminal or test explorer, inherit ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE=1, which makes every Electron binary run as plain Node.js. New Electron Application and Open VS Code remove that variable. If you pass env to New Electron Application yourself, leave it out there.

An application cannot be started. Playwright attaches to an Electron application through the Node.js inspector. Applications built with the Electron fuse EnableNodeCliInspectArguments switched off cannot be started.

Windows show up on the desktop although the tests run under xvfb-run. On a Wayland desktop, see CI and the Linux display.

The command palette runs the wrong command. The palette filters asynchronously. Wait for the command’s row before pressing Enter, as in the first VS Code test.

Every Browser keyword is ambiguous. Electron and VSCode contain all Browser keywords. Import only one of the libraries, or use the usual Robot Framework means such as Set Library Search Order or full keyword names.