Skipping chromedriver download during installation

[JacksonLei123]

Describe the bug

Is there any way to skip chromedriver download when running appium plugin install --source=npm appium-device-farm ? Like passing a flag similar to --chromedriver-skip-install when downloading appium. This could be useful for those who prefer to manually install a chromedriver in a custom directory

[sudharsan-selvaraj]

You need to pass --plugin-device-farm-skip-chrome-download=false to skip automatic chromedriver download while starting the appium server

[JacksonLei123]

Does that flag work while installing the plugin itself? Because running appium plugin install --source=npm appium-device-farm already tries to download chromedriver. I'm trying to skip chromedriver installation during the plugin install phase. I'm also tried running appium plugin install --source=npm appium-device-farm --plugin-device-farm-skip-chrome-download=false but unsurprisingly, the flag --plugin-device-farm-skip-chrome-download=false was not recognized since I hadn't been able to install the plugin yet

[saikrishna321]

@JacksonLei123 CLI flag is post installation and not during installation. We don't download chromedriver during installation. Can you please share logs if something is failing

[JacksonLei123]

Getting the following error when running appium plugin install --source=npm appium-device-farm:

Original error: Request failed with status code 400. CDInstaller Error installing Chromedriver: Cannot retrieve the information about available Chromedrivers from https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com, https://googlechromelabs.github.io/chrome-for-testing/known-good-versions-with-downloads.json. Please make sure these URLs are available within your local network, check Appium server logs and/or consult the driver troubleshooting guide

[saikrishna321]

@JacksonLei123 please share full logs.

Plugin nor Appium does not installation any chrome

[sudharsan-selvaraj]

Can you try setting below environment variable and install the plugin

export APPIUM_SKIP_CHROMEDRIVER_INSTALL=1

Reference: https://github.com/appium/appium-chromedriver?tab=readme-ov-file#skipping-binary-installation