TravisCI fails with Cannot start PhantomJS

Question

TravisCI seems to be unable to start PhantomJS to run my Karma/Jasmine tests. Here is the error log:

INFO [karma]: Karma v0.12.16 server started at http://localhost:9876/
INFO [launcher]: Starting browser PhantomJS
WARN [watcher]: Pattern "/home/travis/build/fender/dmeapp/config.js" does not match any file.
ERROR [launcher]: Cannot start PhantomJS

INFO [launcher]: Trying to start PhantomJS again (1/2).
ERROR [launcher]: Cannot start PhantomJS

INFO [launcher]: Trying to start PhantomJS again (2/2).
ERROR [launcher]: Cannot start PhantomJS

ERROR [launcher]: PhantomJS failed 2 times (cannot start). Giving up.
Warning: Task "karma:continuous" failed. Use --force to continue.

The full build can be seen here: https://travis-ci.org/fender/dmeapp/builds/29499011 The repository is available here: https://github.com/fender/dmeapp

I am able to run the tests locally. Perhaps there is some extra step I need to take for PhantomJS to be available on the TravisCI instance?

Answer 1

You just have to install the karma-phantomjs-launcher and PhantomJS will work on Travis. However, if you use Firefox as the testing browser, then you have to include these two lines:

  - "export DISPLAY=:99.0"
  - "sh -e /etc/init.d/xvfb start"

In summary, this is what you have to include in your .travis.yml file:

language: node_js
node_js:
  - "0.11"
  - "0.10"

before_script:
  - npm install -g grunt-cli
  - npm install -g bower
  - npm install -g karma
  - npm install karma-phantomjs-launcher -save-dev
  - bower install
  - "export DISPLAY=:99.0"
  - "sh -e /etc/init.d/xvfb start"