New Launcher - Chrome Headless

[dignifiedquire]

@wesleycho mentioned he would like to work on this. So opening an issue for planning.

[maksimr]

@dignifiedquire reporter? Looks like it should be launcher :)

[wesleycho]

Should be launcher - from what I understand, we need to add support for xvfb (#1320) in core before we add a new launcher, is this correct?

[dignifiedquire]

Yes it should be launcher :D

@wesleycho why do we need support for xvfb in core, as far as I understand there are chromium builds which are really headless:

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11839303
• https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=546953#c54

[wesleycho]

Ah, was xvfb only for when there was not a headless version? I must've misunderstood the situation when researching this before.

Doing some more searching, it appears that the --headless parameter is going to be added to Chrome eventually - do we want to create a separate launcher for headless Chromium? How do we want to handle using the headless Chromium itself? Currently it looks like one has to build it - instructions here. Should we build it fresh as part of the npm install process?

[vivganes]

If we plan to build headless Chromium during npm install then it is going to increase the 'setup' time for people who don't want headless Chromium as well. Creating a separate launcher will not have this issue. Also it will be helpful to isolate headless from regular Chromium because headless chromium is new and not supported in all platforms yet.

[wesleycho]

IMO we should create a new launcher for headless Chrome.

I haven't gotten a chance to sit down and start hacking it out since I have been busy, but I should be able to start working on an implementation next week.

[EddyP23]

So what is the plan for this? Is there a repo or an issue I can follow to track progress on this?

[myitcv]

@EddyP23 in lieu of something official, you can create a custom launcher today, per this comment