Empty --spec parameter error message is misleading for Cypress developers

[sainthkh]

Current behavior

When you don't pass anything after --spec like yarn workspace @packages/launchpad cypress:run:e2e --spec, it shows the error message like below:

No version of Cypress is installed in: /home/sainthkh/.cache/Cypress/0.0.0-development/Cypress

Please reinstall Cypress by running: cypress install

----------

Cypress executable not found at: /home/sainthkh/.cache/Cypress/0.0.0-development/Cypress/Cypress

----------

Platform: linux-x64 (Ubuntu - 20.04)
Cypress Version: 0.0.0-development

Cypress is actually installed (or cached in CI). The --spec is empty. But the message is really misleading.

Desired behavior

Maybe, the message should be changed to No spec files provided. They should be provided after --spec argument.

Test code to reproduce

In our project root, yarn workspace @packages/launchpad cypress:run:e2e --spec

Cypress Version

10.1.0

Other

No response

[marktnoonan]

What's happening here seems to be a quirk of how we ensure that in the Cypress repo, we run in dev mode. This script runs when @packages/launchpad cypress:run:e2e is run.

The issue is not with the --spec flag as such. In a regular project the message is fine. npx cypress run --spec leads to this:

error: option '-s, --spec <spec>' argument missing

But within the cypress repo, that last flag ends up receiving --dev as the argument. I didn't look too closely, but something in the timing of when we push it seems to be an issue.

Swallowing the --dev flag means it no longer prevents the attempt to verify the Cypress binary for the version 0.0.0-development. There's nothing in the cache to verify at that path, since we aren't working with a binary that was installed, we are working with whatever the current code is in the branch being developed. So Cypress complains, correctly, that you don't have anything at that path. The same thing happens if you leave --browser at the end, for example, or any flag that needs an argument.

This definitely could be better, I'll route this to the team to improve at some point so that it works as expected when developing Cypress, just as is does when using a regular build. But at least for users of Cypress in other projects, this all seems to be working as expected.

[sainthkh]

@marktnoonan I added "for Cypress Developers" for clarity.

[github-actions]

This issue has not had any activity in 180 days. Cypress evolves quickly and the reported behavior should be tested on the latest version of Cypress to verify the behavior is still occurring. It will be closed in 14 days if no updates are provided.

[cypress-app-bot]

This issue has been closed due to inactivity.