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Issue 767346 link

Starred by 3 users

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Status: Untriaged
Owner: ----
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EstimatedDays: ----
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Pri: 3
Type: Bug



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Trim down headless_shell to the essentials

Project Member Reported by eseckler@chromium.org, Sep 21 2017

Issue description

Now that puppeteer has launched, and standard features, such as screenshots and pdf, are available through it (and tested there!), we could/should remove corresponding obsolete command line flags from headless_shell.
 
I've seen feedback that a lot of people like these more common flags for testing and one offs. In most cases, they're not developers and don't know how to write script. Will --screenshot and --print-to-pdf stick around? Those two are quite useful.
I think the main issues with these flags are that they a) are not continuously tested and b) by their nature cannot expose the full flexibility of the devtools/puppeteer APIs.

My feeling is that we should make it as easy as possible to use puppeteer for these quick-and-dirty testing / one off use cases - the example scripts/apps for puppeteer hit those use cases, including screenshots + PDFs, I believe, and are much more illustrative than the implementation of the switches in headless_shell.

In their current form, the switches aren't intended to be relied upon, so users of headless will sooner or later have to write a script. If we don't remove them, we should at least make it clear to users that they are only intended for one-off/testing purposes, e.g. by logging warnings when they are used.
We should be careful about removing anything people are already relying on. Lots of headless reference material has already been published around the web and people are using said flags in envs like CI. 

If we were to deprecate, perhaps we could warn first and capture metrics in UMA to know when usage has fallen below a threshold. Similar to how Blink features go through a deprecation process.

> In their current form, the switches aren't intended to be relied upon

First I've heard of that :( 
Agreed, we don't want to pull the rug out from under anyone.

(One more nit: currently there's no UMA in headless mode -- see bug 763020)
Headless FF has added similar flags: https://twitter.com/FirefoxNightly/status/908663240984588288
Project Member

Comment 6 by sheriffbot@chromium.org, Sep 27

Labels: Hotlist-Recharge-Cold
Status: Untriaged (was: Available)
This issue has been Available for over a year. If it's no longer important or seems unlikely to be fixed, please consider closing it out. If it is important, please re-triage the issue.

Sorry for the inconvenience if the bug really should have been left as Available.

For more details visit https://www.chromium.org/issue-tracking/autotriage - Your friendly Sheriffbot

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