Same Cypress tests reporting different results on different machines using Chrome & Electron - google-chrome

Question

My colleague & I are running the same Cypress test suite on our machines, but getting different results.
The version of Cypress we are using is 3.8.3.
When they run .\node_modules\.bin\cypress run, all tests are passing.
But when I try to run the same command on my machine, one of the tests is failing.
I get the below error message:
<failure message="cy.type() can only be called on a single element.
Your subject contained 8 elements." type="CypressError">
<![CDATA[CypressError: cy.type() can only be called on a single element. Your subject contained 8 elements.
I can understand what the test is saying, but I don't know why we are getting different results on different machines when running the same tests.
One difference I can spot is that they have the option to run tests on Chrome, while I only have the option to run on Electron.
Can someone please help to explain what is causing this issue, & how it can be resolved

Answer 1

Cypress automatically detects browsers installed on your local machine. So please check if you have chrome installed. Electron comes directly with cypress.
The application behavior can vary from machine to machine and also from browser to browser depending on the configurations and also on the internet speed. So its always good to use Test Retries which will retry the test as per the defined value before finally marking the test as fail. Test retries were introduced in cypress 5.0.
You can apply them globally through your cypress.json
{
"retries": {
// Configure retry attempts for `cypress run`
// Default is 0
"runMode": 2,
// Configure retry attempts for `cypress open`
// Default is 0
"openMode": 0
}
Or, you can also add it to a specific test -
describe('User sign-up and login', () => {
// `it` test block with no custom configuration
it('should redirect unauthenticated user to sign-in page', () => {
// ...
})
// `it` test block with custom configuration
it(
'allows user to login',
{
retries: {
runMode: 2,
openMode: 1,
},
},
() => {
// ...
}
)
})
Or to a specific test suite as well -
// Customizing retry attempts for a suite of tests
describe('User bank accounts', {
retries: {
runMode: 2,
openMode: 1,
}
}, () => {
// The per-suite configuration is applied to each test
// If a test fails, it will be retried
it('allows a user to view their transactions', () => {
// ...
}
it('allows a user to edit their transactions', () => {
// ...
}
})