Setup Robot Framework with Browser Library on Ubuntu 20.04
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Robot Framework for Testautomation supports various technology stacks through Library extensions. Robot framework is written in Python, so therefor we need python installation and pip package manager. Browser Library is a wrapper around Playwright framework which is written in Javascript using nodejs. To setup Robot framework on fresh OS installation the list of tools and packages to be installed goes like this:
- Python with pip
- Nodejs with npm
- Visual Studio Code
Python installation
OS Environment in my case is Ubuntu 20.04 and we gonna follow installation guide for Linux, but similar principal can be followed with Windows or Mac OS.
On some OS distributions you will find python already installed. Usually it is python 2.7 version. On my Ubuntu installation I have python 3.8 installed which is compatible version for robot framework. In some cases it is recommended to use newest version of python, but if you plan to use some libraries you should check if they are compatible with newest version of python and robot framework. Currently active version of python is 3.10.1.
To find new Python installation we go to Python Downloads. Current version can vary and if you follow this guide later there could be newer version available.
For this guide you can carry on with already installed version of Python, which is 3.8 or you can install the latest. On Ubuntu you can install python via standard debian sources or you can compile official source package. Here is nice overview how you can do that.
Now you need package manager for python, which is known under the name pip. With pip you will be able to install robot framework and browser library. The easiest way to install any package on ubuntu is apt install command from standard debian sources and for our specific case the next command will install pip.
sudo apt install python3-pip -yFor windows installation you can use .msi installation package or chocolatey package installation manager.
In case of mac OS I would recommend installation with brew.
