FirefoxDriver not starting - Incompatible versions of Selenium and Firefox

[PeterWippermann]

I'm on Firefox 41.0.2 and I couldn't start the AuthenticationTest out-of-the-box. Instead the test hangs when creating the Webdriver-Object. After 45 seconds the test aborts, saying that he couldn't connect to localhost:7055 and prints some debug output from the creation of the Firefox profile.

I could fix this on my machine by adding a dependency to a later version of selenium (I chose 2.46.0) to your sample project.

As of today you only have an inherited dependency from GWT/GXT-Driver to Selenium (Version 39, I think). Maybe you should consider to add an explicit dependency like I did?

[niloc132]

Every single release of firefox requires an update to all selenium jars, and I've let that lapse a bit (mindless pom changes every 6 weeks). Internally my org runs a slightly older webdriver server, and latest webdriver is incompatible with it (yay for 'minor' releases that are totally incompatible), so I've let this lapse.

Feel free to make a PR that updates the pom to the latest, it will be accepted if it builds at all. Otherwise I'll try to pick it up in the next week or two.

Note that Chrome does not have this per-release breaking change issue.

[PeterWippermann]

How about adding a dependency to Selenium without specifying any certain version? This would eliminate the need for regular updates, wouldn't it? However, if you say, some minor releases break your tests from time to time, there is no antidote for this - I guess :-)

[niloc132]

If you don't add a version for a dependency, it simply won't build, maven won't allow it.

[ERROR] The build could not read 1 project -> [Help 1]
[ERROR]   
[ERROR]   The project org.senchalabs.gwt:gwt-driver:0.0.1-SNAPSHOT (/Users/colin/workspace/gwt-driver/pom.xml) has 2 errors
[ERROR]     'dependencies.dependency.version' for org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-java:jar is missing. @ line 39, column 15
[ERROR]     'dependencies.dependency.version' for org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-server:jar is missing. @ line 43, column 15

This change made to gwt-driver itself.

However, the API of selenium changes rarely - instead, your own project can declare selenium latest version, and you will override the selenium version in gwt/gxt driver.

To try this, modify the gwt-driver-sample pom to actually declare selenium at the latest version, and notice that it correctly uses that rather than what is transitively depended on via gwt-driver.

[PeterWippermann]

Sure, for my own project I will manage my Selenium dependency manually. But for your sample app to stay up-to-date, this could help: http://stackoverflow.com/q/30571/193705

[niloc132]

Ooh, that's new to me, I will look into it!