#Testing

URDF Studio uses complementary test layers:

#Unit tests

Node tests cover core parsing and analysis, editor and renderer logic, storage, and release planning. Core tests install Node CoreIo so xacro and SRDF work without a host. Release tests use temporary Git repositories and never publish.

Run alone:

npm run test:unit

#Renderer + web shell

Playwright drives a headless Chromium against the built artifacts.

npm run compile     # build extension + renderer
npm run web:build   # build web app
npx playwright test

The isolated harness covers renderer behavior and the web shell covers complete browser flows, including real export downloads, blob cleanup, theme persistence, keyboard navigation, and native 2K / 150% display scaling. Specs share a static server helper while each test keeps its own browser state.

Set CHROMIUM_PATH to use an installed Chromium instead of Playwright's download. HTML reports are written to playwright-report/; failed attempts retain traces and screenshots in test-results/.

#Real VS Code

The suite opens Franka through the actual custom editor, then drives webview controls to save source to disk, restore a saved pose after reopening, and reload an included xacro file. Success requires every flow to complete and the editor process to exit cleanly.

In release CI, URDF_STUDIO_VSIX and URDF_STUDIO_EXPECTED_VERSION make the runner extract and load the candidate package, including its packaged assets. The same VSIX is published after testing. Locally, the runner defaults to the development build from npm run compile.

#Real-world smoke test

git clone https://github.com/frankarobotics/franka_description /tmp/franka_description
FRANKA_DIR=/tmp/franka_description node scripts/test-franka.mjs

Loads fr3, fer, and fp3 end-to-end and asserts:

• The xacro expands without errors.
• Every mesh declared in the URDF resolves to a file on disk.
• No console errors during render.
• The canvas paints a non-trivial dataURL.

Override the targets:

FRANKA_TARGETS=fr3v2_1,mobile_fr3_duo_v0_2 node scripts/test-franka.mjs

#CI

Release pipeline runs unit, browser, and real VS Code tests on branch pushes and pull requests. Reports are uploaded even when a retry succeeds. Release automation documents versioning and how the tested VSIX reaches the beta or stable Marketplace channel.

The Franka smoke test is not in CI (cloning 226 MB on every run is wasteful). Run it locally before merging changes to the mesh URL or xacro pipelines.

#Adding tests

• Pure core change? Add a node --test case in test/unit/core.test.ts.
• Renderer behavior? Add a Playwright test in test/renderer/features.spec.ts using the harness's stub host.
• End-to-end change? Add to test/renderer/web-shell.spec.ts.

For fixtures: small URDFs go under test/fixtures/. The xacro fixture and the leak-test pair are good templates.