I'm trying to run automated testing on iOS devices without installing Xcode, but seem like it doesn't work.
So I just want to know that Does Appium really need Xcode for run automated testing on iOS device? and why?
Xcode needs to be present for Appium to work.
Appium's command life-cycle, works as :
Selenium webdriver picks a command form the code like (Element.click) and sends it in form of JSON via http request to the Appium server. Appium server knows the automation context like the iOS and Android and sends this command to the Instruments command server which will wait for the Instruments command client (written in node.js) to pick it up and execute it in bootstrap.js with in the iOS instruments environment. Once the command is executed the command client sends back the message to the Appium server which logs everything related to the command in its console. This cycle keeps going till the time all the commands gets executed.
Apple’s instruments binary, which Appium uses to launch the iOS simulator, by default uses the currently-selected Xcode, and the highest iOS SDK installed with that version of Xcode.
Appium uses the appium-xcuitest-driver to test iOS devices using the Xcode UI Testing protocol. Under the hood, it will launch the WebDriverAgent on the iOS device, which does the heavy lifting.
There is 3rd party, commercial software which allow you to launch Appium tests on iOS devices without having to use Xcode. Such examples are Mobile Center from MicroFocus, Appium Studio from Experitest, or the quamotion/appion-docker-ios docker image.
Yes you need xcode to run you test on ios. And yes it supports native, hybrid as well as browsers.
Related
Is there a way to get a Flutter Application running on own ios device with Windows and without paying money?
No, it is not possible to run an iOS simulator on Windows.
The reason for this is the following (highlighting is mine):
Simulator allows you to rapidly prototype and test builds of your app during the development process. Installed as part of the Xcode tools [...]
This means that iOS simulator come only with Xcode. And Xcode is only available on MacOS.
This means that you will either need to run MacOS yourself or use a service that runs your app on MacOS for you.
See also: https://stackoverflow.com/a/28573/6509751
For Flutter this means that you will have to test your code on Android, Desktop, or Web locally. You can still run an iOS simulator in your CI or do something similar to what was described in the answer linked above.
I am new to developing mobile apps and wanted to try Flutter but I use Windows. Because Flutter doesn't support Windows yet I had the idea to use a virtual machine running Linux to install Flutter. Does this work?
Also in the Flutter setup it says this:
To develop Flutter apps for iOS, you need a Mac with Xcode 7.2 or newer.
Is there a way to develop iOS apps without having a Mac?
Yes, you can develop iOS apps with Linux (or Windows) using Android Studio or Visual Studio Code. The point of Flutter is that you have one code base and can deploy to both Android and iOS. So the development phase is no problem.
In the past you could only deploy iOS apps to the App Store if you had a Mac, but there are some more options now. See the following articles:
How to sign Flutter apps for iOS automatically without a Mac
Developing and debugging Flutter apps for iOS without a Mac
How to develop and distribute iOS apps without Mac with Flutter & Codemagic
Build an iOS app without a Mac or iPhone using Flutter
To test your app on the iOS simulator, though, it is still necessary to have a Mac. However, theoretically the app should have the same behavior for most things as on an Android device, so you wouldn't necessary need to test it using the iOS simulator. I would say long term you would probably want to consider getting a Mac, but it is certainly not necessary in the beginning.
Update: In a recent app I made, my tests passed in the Android emulator but crashed in the iOS simulator. It was a normal bug and nothing specific to iOS, but for some reason the Android simulator didn't crash. So for a production app, you really do need to test it on an iOS device/simulator.
As you point in your question:
To develop Flutter apps for iOS, you need a Mac with Xcode 7.2 or newer.
You can work around by using an external service (like Travis-ci or other) to build your code for iOS. However it's not usable as a developer workflow as that can take several minutes to get the artefact.
You should check out MacOS cloud solutions like MacInCloud. There are CI/CD solution that will support it (e.g. CircleCI and BitRise) however these are not suited for development.
Services like MacInCloud allow you to remote desktop into a Mac where you could conceivably use XCode remotely.
Windows is now partially supported in the way you can edit and publish for Android but you still can't create for IOS where a mac is required (XCode).
More informations https://flutter.io/setup-windows
You can use tools like Appollo to do just that directly from Windows or Linux. Appollo is a python CLI tool.
To install Appollo run pip install appollo, then setup your developer account with Appollo (https://appollo.readthedocs.io/en/master/tutorial/2_configure_app_store_connect.html) once this is done you can start building your app with appollo build start
You can check out a few example videos here : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBNRrJd4UP0QQRoYF4JOEmA
I know that it's impossible to code the test on ubuntu since I need apple's xCode, but I would like to know if, once coded, it is possible to run the automated tests on Ubuntu.
Thanks.
No, appium needs xCode to use UiAutomation and instruments to perform testing on iOS unfortunately.
I did follow with success the following tutorial: Appium on Raspberry-Pi
My current setup is as follows:
iOS devices connected to Raspberry-Pi 4 (Ubuntu)
Appium server on RPi + Quamotion tools
Inspect/Run automation scripts from remote computer.
I tried this on RPi but I guess this works on any Ubuntu computer/server.
Am trying to run appium tool for testing apps. While starting appium server i finished all setting right way. When appium running the app will start at time but suddently it get crash.
Yes.Am using Xcode 6.0 and Appium 1.3.4
Make sure the .app file you are using is build for simulator if you are running appium for simulator and a different build i.e the build for device if you want to run it into real device....This is one of the cause which causes the instruments to crash at start up.
When I create an new project with XCode then generate the app file, it is working fine - I can open the inspector.
But I have a problem when I use an already developed application and the build is coming from a developer profile : I can't open the inspector and instruments crash on startup.
While running the script please start xcode and go in the settings of the mobile device and find developer options. Make sure UIAutomation is enabled there. If it is not then enable it and after it try to run the script again. Surely it will work.
I am trying to automate the test cases in real apple device using appium but not able to do so.
Need help to setup the appium from appium.app not from terminal to test real apple devices.
There are currently issues with the current release of Appium.app (1.2.0). You cannot use Appium.app alone to run Appium.
You need to install Appium via Source or Appium-version-manager
You need to install XCode
You need to install XCode's command line tools
Follow these setup instructions.
Then follow these instructions to get the application ready for testing.
After that, run a simple test in your language of choice. Examples here
Once you get that working on the simulator, you need to prepare your application for testing on a real device by archiving the Application into an .ipa file signed with a Development certificate that contains your target device's UDID.
THEN, you can supply the udid and deviceName arguments to Appium server/desired_capabilities as defined in the desired_caps document.