Inside Out | Running Qt tests in Github actions using xvfb

Running Qt tests in Github actions using xvfb

January 2021

ℹ️ The user migrated the pyqtkeybind repo to Github Actions, using X11 virtual framebuffer for UI tests with xdotool and assertions on triggers. They faced challenges due to xvfb dependencies but were able to resolve them by following documentation from pytest-qt. The final actions yml file is provided along with the steps taken during migration.

I moved the pyqtkeybind↗ repo to Github Actions recently. We run a few UI tests using the X11 virtual framebuffer↗ in the CI. The test registers for a few hotkeys in X11 and then we use the xdotool to mimic keyboard invocations, finally assert on the trigger.

Migrating to Actions was not quite straightforward because of the xvfb dependencies. Nice folks over at pytest-qt have documented them here↗.

The final actions yml is here↗. Key parts are below:

jobs:
  build:
    env:
      DISPLAY: ':99.0'
    -steps:
      - name: Install dependencies
        run:|
          sudo apt install -y xvfb x11-utils libxkbcommon-x11-0 libxcb-icccm4 libxcb-image0 libxcb-keysyms1 libxcb-randr0 libxcb-render-util0 libxcb-xinerama0 libxcb-xfixes0 xdotool
      - name: Test
        run:|
          xvfb-run --auto-servernum pytest

Actions has been nice positive experience, so far. It’s super easy to integrate external actions e.g. codecov etc. I’ll move over few more repos off Travis and Appveyor soon.