Support for own Electron version / instance

[ChrisKuBa]

What would you like?

Support other electron installation / versions than that bundled with cypress

Why is this needed?

control preferred runtime / version
support new features
be independed of breaking changes and electron support cycle within cypress

Other

it does not work, when another local electron version was confgured as additional browser. the electron prcess exit with an error code

Discussion

How can I configure Cypress to use my own electron version / installation?
Because the version of electron bundled with cypress is outdated and also we ship our own fixed version of electron, its necessary to test against a specific electron version.

I try to inject a new browser config, but cypress will not connect. The path to the electron.exe is valid in my configuration, but no process will start / the process exit with 4294967295.

import { defineConfig } from 'cypress';

import Browser = Cypress.Browser;

const addLocalElectonConfig = (browsersConfig: Browser[]): Browser[] => [
    ...browsersConfig,
    {
        name: 'electron-locale',
        channel: 'stable',
        family: 'chromium',
        displayName: 'Electron Local',
        version: '126.0.6478.36',
        path: 'C:\\...\\node_modules\\electron\\dist\\electron.exe',
        majorVersion: '126',
        isHeaded: true,
        isHeadless: false,
    },
];

export default defineConfig({
    component: {
        setupNodeEvents(on, config) {
            return {
                ...config,
                browsers: addLocalElectonConfig(config.browsers),
            };
        },
    },
    e2e: {
        setupNodeEvents(on, config) {
            return {
                ...config,
                browsers: addLocalElectonConfig(config.browsers),
            };
        },
    },
});

cypress:launcher:browsers launching browser { browser: { name: 'electron-locale', channel: 'stable', family: 'chromium', displayName: 'Electron Local', version: '126.0.6478.36', path: 'C:\...\node_modules\electron\dist\electron.exe', majorVersion: '126', isHeaded: true, isHeadless: false }, url: 'about:blank' } +0ms

cypress:launcher:browsers spawning browser with opts { ... } +2ms

cypress:network:connect received error on connect, retrying { iteration: 0, delay: 100, err: Error: connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:53525 at TCPConnectWrap.afterConnect [as oncomplete] (node:net:1494:16) { errno: -4078, code: 'ECONNREFUSED', syscall: 'connect', address: '127.0.0.1', port: 53525 } } +3s

cypress:network:connect received error on connect, retrying { iteration: 1, delay: 100, err: Error: connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:53525 at TCPConnectWrap.afterConnect [as oncomplete] (node:net:1494:16) { errno: -4078, code: 'ECONNREFUSED', syscall: 'connect', address: '127.0.0.1', port: 53525 } } +102ms

cypress:launcher:browsers electron-locale exited: { code: 4294967295, signal: null } +118ms

cypress:server:util:socket_allowed allowed socket closed, removing { localPort: 53516 } +7s

Thx