Accelerate Cypress Testing with HyperExecute

As web applications grow in complexity, so do your Cypress test suites. This growth can strain existing Jenkins CI/CD pipelines, leading to slow build and test times when managing large test suites within a mono repo environment.

If you also rely on Cypress for your automation testing, then you might have encountered a scenario where, as soon as your application matured, its test suite ballooned, leading to a significant blockage for your product release cycles.

In this blog, we will dive into the challenges our customers (developer, QA engineer, and product manager alike) faced when managing large Cypress test suites within Jenkins CI/CD pipelines.

We’ll also explore the solution to these challenges and how HyperExecute, an AI-powered Next Gen Testing platform helped to achieve more efficient end-to-end test executions.

Real-World Challenges and its Solution for Cypress Testing

Struggle to Scale your Monorepo Application

Monorepos offers a centralized approach to code management, simplifying tracking and fostering collaboration. However, when it comes to Cypress testing on cloud platforms, uploading the entire monorepo can be inefficient. This is because a significant portion of the code (libraries, helper functions, etc.) is irrelevant for testing purposes.

HyperExecute addressed this challenge with its target-directory flag, within their Command Line Interface (CLI). This flag allowed them to specify the exact directory containing their test suite and essential dependencies. The testing team has to upload only the critical code significantly reducing their upload times and optimising resource usage.

As their application matured and the test suite grew, the existing Jenkins CI/CD pipeline to automate the process of uploading, building, testing, and deploying software became a blockage. Managing this massive test suite within Jenkins resulted in slow build and test times, pipeline backlogs, and significantly increased operational overhead.

Even after implementing the best practices for their CI/CD pipeline, sluggish testing cycles still occurred. HyperExecute seamlessly integrates with their existing CI/CD tools, acting as a plug-in, not an overhaul. It intelligently orchestrates parallel testing across its cloud infrastructure, maximizing efficiency and reducing test execution time by up to 70% compared to traditional cloud grids.

Test Execution Slowdowns

Every time you run Cypress tests on a traditional cloud testing grid, all the essential libraries and dependencies are downloaded afresh. This repetitive process, while seemingly minor, can snowball into a significant slowdown.

These redundant downloads often increase your test execution times by a substantial percentage, hindering developer productivity. In the worst-case scenario, it can add precious hours to your development cycles.

HyperExecute tackled this challenge for our customers who wrestled with redundant downloads during test execution head-on with its intelligent caching mechanisms. It identifies and stores critical libraries, frameworks, and dependencies required for each test. This ensured these elements were downloaded only once, significantly accelerating subsequent test runs.

Optimizing the Code Upload Duration

Traditionally, even minor code changes or test script modifications in your test suite can trigger the upload of the entire codebase to the cloud testing platform before each test run. While this approach ensures all necessary code is present, it becomes inefficient for frequent, incremental updates.

Uploading the entire codebase repeatedly wastes valuable time and resources, especially when only a small portion of the code has changed. This can lead to frustration and slow down your development process.

HyperExecute offered an ingenious solution to address this challenge to one of our customers, the differentialUpload flag.

When enabled, this flag leverages intelligent algorithms to identify only the parts of your codebase that have been modified since the last upload. This eliminates the need to upload unchanged portions repeatedly, resulting in significantly faster upload times and streamlined test execution cycles.

Frustration of Failing Tests

As your application matures, your QA team is likely to face a very common issue i.e. flaky tests. Now, these tests pass inconsistently, creating a significant bottleneck in the development process, as they have to spend precious hours debugging these gremlins, hindering their ability to focus on new features.

HyperExecute understands your pain and can help you deal with these flaky tests by:

1. Spec-Level Retry

Initially, as a QA you can retry the test specifications (specs) upon failure. While this approach helped with some flaky tests, it wasn’t a silver bullet. Some tests remained stubbornly problematic.

2. Test History Analysis

HyperExecute’s comprehensive test history provides you valuable insights for addressing flaky tests in the long run:

• Identifying Trends: The ability to analyze past test runs allowed our clients to identify patterns in test failures. This helped them pinpoint recurring issues causing flakiness.
• Targeted Strategies: In-depth analysis of past runs provided a deeper understanding of flaky test behaviour, enabling the development team to create targeted strategies for improvement.

3. Test Muting

Test Muting allows your QA team to temporarily mute your known flaky tests that might eventually pass. This strategic approach prioritised debugging critical failures while preserving potentially valuable tests for future analysis.

Test-muting streamlines the development workflow by ensuring developers aren’t chasing ghosts – they could focus on the issues that truly impacted functionality.

Conclusion

Traditional CI/CD pipelines and cloud testing grids can strangle the efficiency of Cypress testing for web applications. HyperExecute cuts through these limitations with its innovative features like target-directory uploads, intelligent caching, differential uploads, and advanced flaky test management.

Leveraging HyperExecute for Cypress testing can further help your QA team achieve efficient, high-performance testing for complex web applications. They can focus on building amazing web apps, with the confidence that HyperExecute has their testing covered. Try it now!