Testing Android Applications on a Clean Emulator

Question

When I want to test an android application, I create a new AVD, start it in the emulator, wait for the emulator to finish booting, and then use ADB to install the application, and when I'm done delete the AVD. Are there any tools that automate all of those steps? I tried writing my own but I couldn't find a way to tell if the emulator was completely booted, as the Android SDK website says not to use "adb wait-for-device install file.apk".

• None: Eclipse does this, though not in a clean emulator, but it doesn't raise errors about applications already installed, so this is fine. How does Eclipse do this?

Answer 1

You're right not to use wait-for-device. It does not wait for the package manager to be available, which is what you need. I'm not sure how eclipse does it but you can poll the emulator until the package manager is available using the command adb shell pm path android. The command should return 'package: something'. Check out this python script that uses the technique: www.netmite.com/android/mydroid/1.6/.../adb_interface.py. It's pretty big but if you search for the command above you'll find the relevant piece of the script.

Why do you want to delete the AVD every time?

If you are deleting it every time because the install command throws an error due to the app already existing on the AVD, you can do this: adb install -r file.apk. The -r part is used for reinstalling the app. Here is the full usage instructions for adb.

Are you deleting it to remove the application you are testing and revert to a 'clean' emulator? If so it's not necessary to delete the AVD every time. You can specify the -wipe-data option when starting the emulator. This effectively resets the AVD to how it was when you created it. Here is the emulator documentation.

Hopefully that helps simplify your script.

• None: I used adb shell pm path android and it worked great. Thanks!