Webdriver instances not created for custom protractor.conf file - selenium

Question

I want to integrate my E2E suite in Travis, so I followed this article. As mentioned in the article I've created a custom protractor.ci.conf.js file of the Travis build. I've placed this file inside my e2e folder (path: e2e/protractor.ci.conf.js).
The only difference in my custom e2e/protractor.ci.conf.js and angular generated protractor.conf.js files is the value in args property displayed below.
e2e/protractor.ci.conf.js
chromeOptions: {
args: [
'--headless',
'window-size=1920,1080'
]
}
protractor.conf.js
const SpecReporter = require('jasmine-spec-reporter').SpecReporter;
exports.config = {
allScriptsTimeout: 11000,
specs: [
'./e2e/**/*.e2e-spec.ts'
],
capabilities: {
shardTestFiles: true,
maxInstances: 2,
'browserName': 'chrome',
chromeOptions: {
args: ['--start-maximized']
}
},
directConnect: true,
baseUrl: 'localhost:4000/',
framework: 'jasmine',
jasmineNodeOpts: {
showColors: true,
defaultTimeoutInterval: 300000,
print: function () {
}
},
useAllAngular2AppRoots: true,
onPrepare: function () {
jasmine.getEnv().addReporter(new SpecReporter());
require('ts-node').register({
project: 'e2e/tsconfig.json'
});
}
};
In my package.json file there are 2 scripts one for running tests locally and one on Travis.
Package.json (at the same level where protractor.conf.js is located)
"scripts": {
...
"test": "ng test --watch=false",
"pree2e": "webdriver-manager update",
"e2e": "concurrently --kill-others \"ng e2e --port=4000\" \"npm run _server:run\"",
"e2e:ci": "concurrently --kill-others \"ng e2e --port=4000 --protractor-config=e2e/protractor.ci.conf.js\" \"npm run _server:run\"",
"_server:run": "tsc -p ./server && concurrently \"tsc -w -p ./server\" \"nodemon dist/server/index.js\" ",
...
},
.travis.yml
branches:
only:
- staging
- prod
- functional-testing
script:
...
- if [[ $TRAVIS_COMMIT_MESSAGE == *"[skip e2e]"* ]]; then echo "skipping E2E test"; else npm run e2e:ci; fi
...
before_deploy:
- sed -i '/dist/d' .gitignore
- git add . && git commit -m "latest build"
- cd $TRAVIS_BUILD_DIR/dist
PROBLEM
When simply running npm run e2e, every test is working fine. But when I'm using npm run e2e:ci command scripts hangs and no instance of WebDriver runs.
I/launcher — Running 0 instances of WebDriver
is coming instead of 1 or 2 instances.

Answer 1

That's because since you made a new config file and apparently placed in the folder
/e2e instead of the default root folder.
The path to the test files in your case should also be updated.
So './e2e/**/*.e2e-spec.ts' will get changed to './**/*.e2e-spec.ts'
Since, currently the test is not able to find any files specified, it doesn't run any instances.