Status of Selenium Manager in October 2023
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Selenium Manager continues its development plan. As usual, in the latest releases, i.e., 0.4.13 and 0.4.14 (shipped with Selenium 4.13 and 4.14, respectively), we have fixed the problems reported so far. In these releases, the issues were related to the extraction of the Firefox binary from the self-extracting archive (SFX) in Windows and the advanced configuration through the configuration file (se-config.toml) and environment variables (e.g., SE_BROWSER). Moreover, these recent releases include new features, as explained below.
Search for the best driver possible in the cache
By default, Selenium Manager needs to request online endpoints (such as Chrome for Testing JSON API or Firefox product-details JSON API
to discover, download, and maintain the proper drivers and browsers that Selenium requires. The downloaded artifacts are stored in the cache (by default, ~/.cache/selenium) and reused from there.
To make the driver resolution procedure more robust, as of version 0.4.13, Selenium Manager includes a new feature for locating the drivers in the cache when some error happens. This way, when a network request (or other function) fails in Selenium Manager, it tries to locate the driver in the cache. This characteristic aims to provide a best-effort solution for creating a Selenium session properly, which is the final objective of Selenium Manager. Also, this feature will help to provide a better experience for locating drivers for Selenium Grid.
Locating Selenium Manager binary with an environment variable
The next feature related to Selenium Manager 0.4.13 has been implemented in the Selenium bindings (i.e., Java, JavaScript, Python, .Net, and Ruby). As of Selenium 4.13.0, the Selenium bindings allow locating the Selenium Manager binary using an environment variable called SE_MANAGER_PATH. This way, if this variable is set, the bindings will use its value as the Selenium Manager path in the local filesystem. This feature will allow users to provide a custom compilation of Selenium Manager, for instance, if the default binaries (compiled for Windows, Linux, and macOS) are incompatible with a given system (e.g., ARM64 in Linux).
Automated Edge management
Selenium Manager 0.4.14 includes automated Edge management. This browser is the last we have in mind for this feature, after Chrome and Firefox.
This feature has been implemented in the same way that Chrome and Firefox for macOS and Linux. In other words, Selenium Manager allows to automatically manage (i.e., discover, downloads, and cache) the latest Edge versions (i.e., stable, beta, dev, canary) and old versions (e.g., 115, 116, etc.). The downloaded binaries, as usual, are stored in the Selenium cache. The following output commands showcase this feature in macOS (first snipped) and Linux (second snippet):
./selenium-manager --browser edge --debug --force-browser-download
DEBUG msedgedriver not found in PATH
DEBUG Checking edge releases on https://edgeupdates.microsoft.com/api/products
DEBUG Required browser: edge 117.0.2045.40
DEBUG Downloading edge 117.0.2045.40 from https://msedge.sf.dl.delivery.mp.microsoft.com/filestreamingservice/files/6e65d9ef-0bb9-4636-8d9e-2b1b9d16149d/MicrosoftEdge-117.0.2045.40.pkg
DEBUG edge 117.0.2045.40 has been downloaded at /Users/boni/.cache/selenium/edge/mac64/117.0.2045.40/Microsoft Edge.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Edge
DEBUG Reading msedgedriver version from https://msedgedriver.azureedge.net/LATEST_RELEASE_117_MACOS
DEBUG Required driver: msedgedriver 117.0.2045.40
DEBUG Downloading msedgedriver 117.0.2045.40 from https://msedgedriver.azureedge.net/117.0.2045.40/edgedriver_mac64.zip
INFO Driver path: /Users/boni/.cache/selenium/msedgedriver/mac64/117.0.2045.40/msedgedriver
INFO Browser path: /Users/boni/.cache/selenium/edge/mac64/117.0.2045.40/Microsoft Edge.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Edge
./selenium-manager --browser edge --debug --browser-version beta
DEBUG msedgedriver not found in PATH
DEBUG edge not found in PATH
DEBUG edge beta not found in the system
DEBUG Checking edge releases on https://edgeupdates.microsoft.com/api/products
DEBUG Required browser: edge 118.0.2088.11
DEBUG Downloading edge 118.0.2088.11 from https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/edge/pool/main/m/microsoft-edge-beta/microsoft-edge-beta_118.0.2088.11-1_amd64.deb
DEBUG edge 118.0.2088.11 has been downloaded at /home/user/.cache/selenium/edge/linux64/118.0.2088.11/msedge
DEBUG Reading msedgedriver version from https://msedgedriver.azureedge.net/LATEST_RELEASE_118_LINUX
DEBUG Required driver: msedgedriver 118.0.2088.11
DEBUG Downloading msedgedriver 118.0.2088.11 from https://msedgedriver.azureedge.net/118.0.2088.11/edgedriver_linux64.zip
INFO Driver path: /home/user/.cache/selenium/msedgedriver/linux64/118.0.2088.11/msedgedriver
INFO Browser path: /home/user/.cache/selenium/edge/linux64/118.0.2088.11/msedge
Nevertheless, this feature cannot be implemented similarly for Windows. The reason is that the Edge installer for Windows is distributed as a Microsoft Installer (MSI) file, designed to be executed with administrator rights. We tried to extract the Edge binaries from that MSI file. Still, it seems not possible (see Stack Overflow post that summarized the problem). All in all, the only solution we found is to install Edge in Windows using the MSI installer, and so, administrator grants are required.
This way, when Edge is attempted to be installed with Selenium Manager in Windows with a non-administrator session, a warning message will be displayed as follows:
./selenium-manager --debug --browser edge --browser-version beta
DEBUG msedgedriver not found in PATH
DEBUG edge not found in PATH
DEBUG edge beta not found in the system
WARN There was an error managing edge (edge can only be installed in Windows with administrator permissions); using driver found in the cache
INFO Driver path: C:\Users\boni\.cache\selenium\msedgedriver\win64\118.0.2088.17\msedgedriver.exe
But when Selenium Manager is executed with administrator grants in Windows, it will be able to automatically discover, download, and install Edge (stable, beta, dev, canary, and older versions):
./selenium-manager --debug --browser edge --browser-version beta
DEBUG msedgedriver not found in PATH
DEBUG edge not found in PATH
DEBUG edge beta not found in the system
DEBUG Checking edge releases on https://edgeupdates.microsoft.com/api/products
DEBUG Required browser: edge 118.0.2088.17
DEBUG Downloading edge 118.0.2088.17 from https://msedge.sf.dl.delivery.mp.microsoft.com/filestreamingservice/files/7adec542-f34c-4dea-8e2a-f8c6fab4d2f3/MicrosoftEdgeBetaEnterpriseX64.msi
DEBUG Installing MicrosoftEdgeBetaEnterpriseX64.msi
DEBUG edge 118.0.2088.17 is available at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge Beta\Application\msedge.exe
DEBUG Required driver: msedgedriver 118.0.2088.17
DEBUG msedgedriver 118.0.2088.17 already in the cache
INFO Driver path: C:\Users\boni\.cache\selenium\msedgedriver\win64\118.0.2088.17\msedgedriver.exe
INFO Browser path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge Beta\Application\msedge.exe
Chromium support
Chromium is released as portable binaries, distributed as zip files for Windows, Linux, and macOS (see Chromium download page). Nevertheless, there is a case in which Chromium is actually installed in the system. This happens in Linux systems when installing Chromium through package managers like atp or snap, for instance, as follows:
sudo snap install chromium
Therefore, as of 0.4.14, Selenium Manager looks for the Chromium binaries in the PATH when Chrome is not discovered. The following snippet showcases how this feature works in a Linux machine in which Chrome is not available, but Chromium has been installed through snap:
./selenium-manager --browser chrome --debug
DEBUG chromedriver not found in PATH
DEBUG Found chromium in PATH: /snap/bin/chromium
DEBUG Running command: /snap/bin/chromium --version
DEBUG Output: "Chromium 117.0.5938.149 snap"
DEBUG Detected browser: chrome 117.0.5938.149
DEBUG Required driver: chromedriver 117.0.5938.149
DEBUG chromedriver 117.0.5938.149 already in the cache
INFO Driver path: /home/user/.cache/selenium/chromedriver/linux64/117.0.5938.149/chromedriver
INFO Browser path: /snap/bin/chromium
Next steps
We are close to implementing all the features initially planned for Selenium Manager. You can trace the status of the development activities in the Selenium Manager project dashboard.
