Feature detection

[Elchi3]

Opening this issue to discuss WebDriver feature detection. cc @whimboo @caugner

Over in openwebdocs/mdn-bcd-collector#1762 we're discussing how to best collect compatibility data for WebDriver (BiDi).

There are existing examples of APIs that expose support status, for example:

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CSS/supports_static
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebGLRenderingContext/getSupportedExtensions
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/PerformanceObserver/supportedEntryTypes_static
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/XRSystem/isSessionSupported

For WebAssembly, the https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/wasm-feature-detect package has been quite useful to determine which wasm features are available.

Is there appetite for having something like this for WebDriver either natively or as a package? It would help us to record compat data and I guess it might also be useful to WebDriver users in general?

[css-meeting-bot]

The Browser Testing and Tools Working Group just discussed Feature detection for BCD collector.

The full IRC log of that discussion

<AutomatedTester> Topic: Feature detection for BCD collector
<AutomatedTester> github: https://github.com//issues/826
<AutomatedTester> whimboo: there isn't much to discuss at this point. I had a meeting last week about the BCD collection
<AutomatedTester> ... we are in need of a way that we can check various versions of browsers to show that new versions of features in bidi went into new browsers
<AutomatedTester> ... this is very difficult to keep track of things
<AutomatedTester> ... at the moment there is a spreadsheet that tracks this but it would be good to get the info that we need
<AutomatedTester> ... my request is that I need feedback on this either here or on the issue
<AutomatedTester> q?
<jgraham> q+
<AutomatedTester> ack next
<orkon> q+
<AutomatedTester> jgraham: I think is a very difficult problem to solve and I am not sure how we can solve this. I kinda feel that keeping this manually updated in a spreadsheet is better. I think one way or another there will be manual process
<AutomatedTester> whimboo: we could try run a test and that will tell us what is supported and what isn't but that is only for commands
<AutomatedTester> ack next
<AutomatedTester> orkon: You said that WPT isn't useful but could we use the data that is already in wpt.fyi that has some of this data already
<AutomatedTester> jgraham: We've never been able to do this on any other platform in the past. It seems easy to start but then it gets very difficult very quickly
<AutomatedTester> ... I think that having a human do this manually it could be the same amount of effort of automating this
<AutomatedTester> q?