Running Windows desktop tests from Linux with disposable VMs

There’s a good reason why testing Windows desktop apps was one of the most requested features from customers: no one in the world has the infrastructure to parallelize thousands of runs per month.

Web testing infrastructure is relatively easy: a headless browser starts inside a Linux container in a couple seconds, costs a fraction of a cent to run, and gets thrown away when the test ends. There’s no equivalent for testing a Windows desktop app.

Our answer was to stop treating Windows machines as servers and treat them like phones: a device that one test claims, uses once, and throws away.