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Mobile Tests in CI

TestFly's own workflow, .github/workflows/mobile-emulator-smoke.yml (Mobile Emulator Smoke), is a working template. It runs on pushes to development that touch the mobile code or examples, and on demand. It never gates the main CI workflow.

JobRunnerWhat it does
Android emulator smoke (API 30, 34)ubuntu-latest with KVMboots an emulator with reactivecircus/android-emulator-runner, runs scripts/ci/android-mobile-smoke.sh
iOS simulator smokemacos-latestboots an iPhone simulator, runs scripts/ci/ios-mobile-smoke.sh

Steps of a job​

  1. Java 21 and Node; npm install -g [email protected] (pin the version you tested with).

  2. Build: mvn -DskipTests install.

  3. Boot the device. Android: enable KVM, then the emulator runner with disable-animations: true. iOS: xcrun simctl boot <udid> and xcrun simctl bootstatus <udid> -b.

  4. Start mobilecli and wait for server.info. The scripts start it explicitly to keep its log (target/mobilecli-server.log); with autoStartServer TestFly would start it too.

  5. Install the agent: mobilecli agent install --device <id>.

  6. iOS only: warm up DeviceKit. The first screen read on a fresh simulator can take longer than a minute while DeviceKit starts. The script reads the view tree once with a 180 s limit before Maven runs:

    curl -sf --max-time 180 -X POST http://localhost:12000/rpc -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
      -d "{\"jsonrpc\":\"2.0\",\"id\":1,\"method\":\"device.dump.ui\",\"params\":{\"deviceId\":\"$udid\"}}"

  7. Run the tests with the device id: MOBILE_DEVICE_ID=<id> mvn test -Dtestfly.profile=<profile> -Dtest=<Class>.

  8. Upload target/surefire-reports/, target/reports/screenshots/ and the mobilecli log as artifacts, also when the job fails.

Tips​

  • Emulators on CI are slow to settle: the example profiles use actionMs: 30000, pollMs: 500, rpcMs: 60000.
  • Settings-app texts depend on the device language; CI images are English.
  • A job that reports Skipped tests did not reach the device; treat it as a failure.
  • Device ids: on Android the AVD name (from mobilecli devices), on iOS the simulator UDID.
  • Secrets for a login test go into the CI secret store and reach the test as environment variables.