grunt-protractor-runner: Unable to pick scenarios

Question

I'm trying to create grunt tasks using grunt-protractor-runner with my protractor-cucumber framework. Below is how the Gruntfile.js looks like:

    grunt.initConfig({
    protractor: {
        options: {
            //configFile: "./config/config.js",
            keepAlive: true,
            noColor: false,
        },
        chrome: {
            options: {
                configFile: "./config/config.js",
                args: {
                    autoConnect: false,
                    seleniumServerJar: './node_modules/webdriver-manager/selenium/selenium-server-standalone-3.141.59.jar',
                    chromeDriver: './node_modules/webdriver-manager/selenium/chromedriver.exe',
                    specs: [
                        '../features/calendar.feature',
                        '../features/deal.feature',
                        '../features/entitlement.feature',
                        '../features/filter.feature',
                        '../features/product.feature'
                    ],
                    capabilities: {
                        browserName: 'chrome',
                        chromeOptions: {
                            useAutomationExtension: false,
                            args: ['–disable-gpu'],
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    },
});
grunt.registerTask('test', ['protractor:chrome']);

If I run command grunt test it opens the chrome browser and closes with the below log:

Running "protractor:chrome" (protractor) task [17:22:57] I/launcher - Running 1 instances of WebDriver [17:22:57] I/hosted - Using the selenium server at http://localhost:4444/wd/hub

0 scenarios 0 steps 0m00.000s

This doesn't pick any scenarios to run. Can you help me to understand what's the issue here? My config.conf looks like this:

const Reporter = require('../support/Reporter.js');
exports.config = {
  seleniumAddress: 'http://localhost:4444/wd/hub',
  autoConnect: false,
  framework: 'custom',
  frameworkPath: require.resolve('protractor-cucumber-framework'),
  restartBrowserBetweenTests: false,
  SELENIUM_PROMISE_MANAGER: true,
  ignoreUncaughtExceptions: true,
  onPrepare: function () {
    browser.ignoreSynchronization = false;
    browser.manage().timeouts().setScriptTimeout(40 * 1000);
    browser.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(4 * 1000);
    browser.manage().window().maximize();
    require('babel-register');
  },
  cucumberOpts: {
    strict: true,
    format: ['json:./reports/json/cucumber_report.json'],
    require: ['../support/*.js', '../stepDefinitions/*.js', '../stepDefinitions/*.ts'],
    tags: 'not @Ignore',     //(@CucumberScenario or @ProtractorScenario) and (not @Ignore)
    retry: 3
  },
  params: {
    env: 'test',
    test: {
      url: '',
      users: {
        BankerRO: '',
        BankerRW: '',
        BusinessRiskRW: '',
        RiskRW: '',
        RO: '',
      },
      db: {
        server: '',
        port: '',
        name: '',
        userId: '',
        password: '',
      }
    }
  },
  onComplete: function () {
    Reporter.moveReportToArchive();
    Reporter.createHTMLReport();
  }
};

Answer 1

I finally found out the root-cause, if I keep spec[] part in the Gruntfile, grunt fails to pick the scenarios even from config.js. When I removed spec from Gruntfile and kept it in the config.js, it started working fine. I'm not sure this is how it works or a potential bug with grunt-protractor-runner

Conclusion: Looks like grunt-protractor-runner looks for specs in config.js file and ignores if you keep it in Gruntfile.js

I have raised this as an issue: https://github.com/teerapap/grunt-protractor-runner/issues/197#issue-537600108