Heroku Buildpack, Chrome for Testing

This buildpack installs Google Chrome browser chrome & chromedriver, the Selenium driver for Chrome, in a Heroku app.

Background

In summer 2023, the Chrome development team addressed a long-standing problem with keeping Chrome & Chromedriver versions updated and aligned with each other for automated testing environments. This buildpack follows this strategy to keep chrome & chromedriver versions in-sync.

Installation

Important

If migrating from a previous Chrome-chromedriver installation, then remove any pre-existing Chrome or Chromedriver buildpacks from the app. See the migration guide.

heroku buildpacks:add -i 1 heroku-community/chrome-for-testing

Deploy the app to install Chrome for Testing. 🚀

Selecting the Chrome Release Channel

By default, this buildpack will download the latest Stable release, which is provided by Google.

You can control the channel of the release by setting the GOOGLE_CHROME_CHANNEL config variable to Stable, Beta, Dev, or Canary, and then deploy/build the app.

Migrating from Separate Buildpacks

Remove Existing Installations

When an app already uses the separate Chrome & Chromedriver buildpacks, remove them from the app, before adding this one:

heroku buildpacks:remove heroku/google-chrome
heroku buildpacks:remove heroku/chromedriver

heroku buildpacks:add -i 1 heroku-community/chrome-for-testing

Path to Installed Executables

After being installed by this buildpack, chrome & chromedriver are set in the PATH of dynos.

If the absolute paths are required, you can discover their location in an app:

>>> heroku run bash
$ which chrome
/app/.chrome-for-testing/chrome-linux64/chrome
$ which chromedriver
/app/.chrome-for-testing/chromedriver-linux64/chromedriver

These locations may change in future versions of this buildpack, so please allow the operating system to resolve their locations from PATH, if possible.

Changes to Command Flags

The prior heroku/google-chrome buildpack wrapped the chrome command with default flags using a shim script. This is no longer implemented for chrome in this buildpack, to support evolving changes to the Chrome for Testing flags, such as the --headless=new variation.

Depending on how an app is already setup for testing with Chrome, it may not require any changes.

If the app fails to start Chrome, please ensure that the following argument flags are set wherever chrome is invoked:

• --headless
• --no-sandbox

Some use-cases may require these flags too:

• --disable-gpu
• --remote-debugging-port=9222

Releasing a new version

For buildpack maintainers only.

1. Create a new release on GitHub.
2. Publish the release tag in Heroku Buildpack Registry.