Docker on Software Quality Solutions Knowledge Base

Squish GUI Testing with Docker - Sway for Wayland AUTs

Fri, 13 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0100

Overview¶

This is a follow-up to Squish GUI Testing with Docker: XVFB for X11 Auts (the X11 article), which covered a Docker + Xvfb setup for Squish. Most of that carries over unchanged. This article only covers what's different when the AUT is a Wayland-native application instead of an X11 one.

Figure 1: Ports are published with -p 5555:4322 (squishserver) and -p 5901:5900 (VNC). Tests can run inside the container with docker exec, where squishrunner reaches squishserver on localhost:4322, or from a host client through published port 5555. The test suite is either bind-mounted from the host examples folder at /app/examples or taken from the examples bundled with the Squish installation in /app/squish/examples.

Squish GUI Testing with Docker - Xvfb for X11 AUTs

Fri, 13 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0100

Overview¶

This is a follow-up to One-up Your Squish GUI Testing With Docker Containers . It provides a reusable Ubuntu 24.04 reference image that generalizes the original one-off example. It keeps Xvfb and adds runtime AUT modes (launch and attach) and x11vnc for remote viewing. It is for X11 AUTs only. For Wayland AUTs, see Sway for Wayland AUTs article.

Docker isn't a VM and has no display server, so a GUI app in a plain container fails or runs headless. Xvfb, a software X11 server that renders to memory, gives the container a virtual screen.

Squish GUI Testing with Docker - Host Display for X11 AUTs with Squish IDE

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Overview¶

This is the third variant in this series, after Xvfb for X11 AUTs and Sway for Wayland AUTs . Instead of giving the container its own virtual display, it connects the container directly to your machine's real display. There's no Xvfb, no Sway and no VNC. The Squish IDE and the AUT appear as normal windows on your desktop, as if Squish were installed locally.

The Xvfb and Sway variants are built for headless use, such as CI pipelines. This one is built for interactive, local development, where you want to see and use the IDE and the AUT directly without installing Squish on your machine. It is also the only variant that installs and runs the full Squish IDE inside the container.