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testland/electron-spectron

Legacy reference for Spectron - Electron's original ChromeDriver-based testing framework, officially deprecated 2022-02-01 at v19.0.0. Documents what Spectron was, the architectural reason it became unmaintainable, the migration path to Playwright `_electron`, and the residual support contract for projects still on Spectron. Use only when auditing a legacy suite or planning a migration off Spectron - for new work use Playwright's `_electron` API.

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Files

spectron-migration.mdreferences/

Spectron -> Playwright migration reference

The before/after code and the concept-by-concept mapping, kept out of the SKILL spine. See SKILL.md for the deprecation facts and the residual support contract, and electron-playwright for the full Playwright _electron authoring, running, and CI workflow.

Sources: Spectron repository (archived), Electron Automated Testing tutorial.

Before: a Spectron test

// Legacy Spectron - DO NOT use for new code
const Application = require('spectron').Application;
const app = new Application({
  path: '/path/to/electron/MyApp.app/Contents/MacOS/MyApp',
});

before(async () => {
  await app.start();
});

after(async () => {
  if (app && app.isRunning()) {
    await app.stop();
  }
});

it('opens a window', async () => {
  const count = await app.client.getWindowCount();
  assert.strictEqual(count, 1);
});

After: the Playwright _electron equivalent

// Modern replacement (per electrontest)
const { _electron: electron } = require('playwright');

let electronApp;
beforeAll(async () => {
  electronApp = await electron.launch({ args: ['.'] });
});
afterAll(async () => {
  await electronApp.close();
});

test('opens a window', async () => {
  const windowCount = electronApp.windows().length;
  expect(windowCount).toBe(1);
});

Migration shopping list

A Spectron-to-Playwright migration touches:

Spectron conceptPlaywright _electron replacement
new Application({ path })electron.launch({ args: ['.'] }) (electrontest)
app.start() / app.stop()electronApp.launch() / electronApp.close()
app.client.<webdriver-method>page = await electronApp.firstWindow(); then standard page.<method> (electrontest)
app.browserWindow.<method> (sync RPC into main process)electronApp.evaluate(({ BrowserWindow }) => { … }) - typed handle (electrontest)
Window counting via app.client.getWindowCount()electronApp.windows().length
ChromeDriver binary lifecycleImplicit - Playwright bundles Chromium and exposes packaged-app launch directly

Plan migration test-file-by-test-file, not big-bang: tag each file as migrated, run both suites in CI until the Spectron set is empty, then delete spectron from package.json.

references

spectron-migration.md

SKILL.md

tile.json