cypress: Docker - Browser: 'chrome' was not found on your system or is not supported by Cypress

I believe this is an issue with the Cypress launcher and not Docker image related. The issue is caused by not fully reading the output of the browser’s version command. In the cypress:launcher logs you will see Could not extract version from stdout using regex: { stdout: '', versionRegex: <varies depending on browser> }. Note that stdout is empty and this log message is different from what you see when the binary is not found (which results in ENOENT for example).

The issue is in getOutput() https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/blob/60b217cccedf28c56b0573665f0b3ee81813a4cc/packages/launcher/lib/utils.ts#L8-L40

When the exit event occurs it is not guaranteed that the stdio streams are closed.

• https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v14.x/docs/api/child_process.html#child_process_event_exit
• https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v14.x/docs/api/stream.html#stream_event_close_1
• https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/38181
• https://github.com/nodejs/node-v0.x-archive/pull/2944

According to the PR that introduced getOutput() (https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/pull/7039)

mysteriously, execa would hang on --version when used with the snap

To resolve the issue, Cypress could revert to using the execa package (assuming no breakage as mentioned in the PR) or update getOutput() to ensure it fully reads the output.

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As an example, for Chrome Cypress tries all of google-chrome, chrome, and google-chrome-stable by default.

https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/blob/60b217cccedf28c56b0573665f0b3ee81813a4cc/packages/launcher/lib/browsers.ts#L7-L14

In the Cypress Docker images, only google-chrome and google-chrome-stable can be used to run Chrome; chrome does not work. This gives Cypress two tries to detect the browser. If running one binary fails to detect the browser because Cypress did not fully read the output, the opposite binary could still work. If the output is not read completely for both binaries then Cypress will conclude that Chrome is not installed. The issue is intermittent due to the timing related nature of the issue (sometimes stdout will have been fully read when the exit event occurs but sometimes it hasn’t) and that Cypress may have to encounter the issue multiple times before detection of a single browser fails.

I have observed one of the two Chrome detections fail in the Docker container by running cypress info in an infinite loop.

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I have observed the general issue when running Cypress intermittently with Cypress 6.x and Cypress 7.1.0.

You can see the issue with empty stdout in the provided logs

• https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/issues/8611#issuecomment-733797690
• https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/issues/15258#issuecomment-788029383

The earliest Cypress version I found this issue reported with is 4.12.0 (https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/issues/9044). getOutput() was released in Cypress 4.4.1 (https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/issues/7020#issuecomment-616743402)

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Potential duplicate issues

• https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/issues/9044
• https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/issues/15258
• https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/issues/15390

Potential obsolete issues

• https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress-docker-images/issues/451

Could a more up-to-date image containing the most up to date version of chrome-stable be released so that the workaround can be utilized? The application that I have automation built requires t the most recent version of chrome be used or else there is an error (This is for an internal application). I am getting the " Browser: ‘chrome’ was not found on your system or is not supported by Cypress." error using cypress/base:16.5.0 docker image. My Dockerfile handles retrieving the latest version of chrome-stable.

The most recent chrome/ff image is for chrome version 94 (chrome94-ff93). I require chrome-stable 96…

Cypress looks for chrome installation in this Path: “C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe”. If chrome installed in “C:/Program Files/” then it will throw an error.

Intermittent issue on our CI with cypress@6.2.1 using Cypress official Docker image.

Same error, approx 1/50th of the time. Restarting the job almost always results in a successful run. No clear pattern.

@AnnaKarinaNava The recommended workaround is to use the chrome/ff images and it appears it has worked out so far. I tried cypress/browsers:node12.18.3-chrome89-ff86 now and it works fine.

Thanks to the cypress team who appears to have addressed this issue. I’m not active over my personal projects now, but if anyone still sees this problem please feel free to re-open.

If I may say so that is not a very good description of how one is supposed to work around the problem. I get this issue with 8.7.0 when using github-actions. Where does one specify cypress/browsers:node12.18.3-chrome89-ff86 ?

I had exactly same issue with version : 8.3.0 . any help please !

ughh, @pgfisico I ran Chrome detection 1000 times in a row in a Docker container, did not see the empty output. Do you know how one could see the STDOUT still streaming after the exit event? I would love to recreate this behavior before changing the getOutput() function