Framework initialization failures never surface their real cause #42

File: selenium-boot/src/main/java/com/seleniumboot/listeners/SuiteExecutionListener.java, onStart() (lines 32-76).

Any bootstrap exception during framework initialization is caught and rethrown as new IllegalStateException("Selenium Boot failed to initialize. Aborting test suite execution.", e). The original cause e is attached in Java, but it never reaches the user.

How this was found

Verified via target/surefire-reports/*.dumpstream while reproducing the missing-execution.mode bug (a separate issue). The dumpstream contains only:

Selenium Boot failed to initialize. Aborting test suite execution.

No stack trace, no cause — even though the code attaches one.

Root cause

This exception aborts the whole forked JVM (a TestNG suite-listener failure, not a normal test failure), so Surefire's fork-crash-dump path only prints getMessage() and never walks getCause(). Whatever actually broke — bad config, bad locator, environment issue — is completely invisible to the user; they just see the generic wrapper message no matter what actually failed.

Suggested fix direction (not prescriptive)

Print or log the full cause chain before/when this exception is thrown, rather than relying on Surefire to surface it.