ReactiveCircus / Android Emulator Runner
Programming Languages
Projects that are alternatives of or similar to Android Emulator Runner
GitHub Action - Android Emulator Runner
A GitHub Action for installing, configuring and running hardware-accelerated Android Emulators on macOS virtual machines.
The old ARM-based emulators were slow and are no longer supported by Google. The modern Intel Atom (x86 and x86_64) emulators require hardware acceleration (HAXM on Mac & Windows, QEMU on Linux) from the host to run fast. This presents a challenge on CI as to be able to run hardware accelerated emulators within a docker container, KVM must be supported by the host VM which isn't the case for cloud-based CI providers due to infrastructural limits. If you want to learn more about this, here's an article I wrote: Running Android Instrumented Tests on CI.
The macOS VM provided by GitHub Actions has HAXM installed so we are able to create a new AVD instance, launch an emulator with hardware acceleration, and run our Android tests directly on the VM.
This action automates the process by doing the following:
- Install / update the required Android SDK components including
build-tools,platform-tools,platform(for the required API level),emulatorandsystem-images(for the required API level). - Create a new instance of AVD with the provided configurations.
- Launch a new Emulator with the provided configurations.
- Wait until the Emulator is booted and ready for use.
- Run a custom script provided by user once the Emulator is up and running - e.g.
./gradlew connectedCheck. - Kill the Emulator and finish the action.
Usage
It is recommended to run this action on a macOS VM, e.g. macos-latest or macos-10.15 to take advantage of hardware accleration support provided by HAXM.
A workflow that uses android-emulator-runner to run your instrumented tests on API 29:
jobs:
test:
runs-on: macos-latest
steps:
- name: checkout
uses: actions/[email protected]
- name: run tests
uses: reactivecircus/[email protected]
with:
api-level: 29
script: ./gradlew connectedCheck
We can also leverage GitHub Actions's build matrix to test across multiple configurations:
jobs:
test:
runs-on: macos-latest
strategy:
matrix:
api-level: [21, 23, 29]
target: [default, google_apis]
steps:
- name: checkout
uses: actions/[email protected]
- name: run tests
uses: reactivecircus/[email protected]
with:
api-level: ${{ matrix.api-level }}
target: ${{ matrix.target }}
arch: x86_64
profile: Nexus 6
script: ./gradlew connectedCheck
If you need specific versions of NDK and CMake installed:
jobs:
test:
runs-on: macos-latest
steps:
- name: checkout
uses: actions/[email protected]
- name: run tests
uses: reactivecircus/[email protected]
with:
api-level: 29
ndk: 21.0.6113669
cmake: 3.10.2.4988404
script: ./gradlew connectedCheck
Configurations
| Input | Required | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
api-level |
Required | N/A | API level of the platform system image - e.g. 23 for Android Marshmallow, 29 for Android 10. Minimum API level supported is 15. |
target |
Optional | default |
Target of the system image - default, google_apis or playstore. |
arch |
Optional | x86 |
CPU architecture of the system image - x86 or x86_64. Note that x86_64 image is only available for API 21+. |
profile |
Optional | N/A | Hardware profile used for creating the AVD - e.g. Nexus 6. For a list of all profiles available, run avdmanager list and refer to the results under "Available Android Virtual Devices". |
cores |
Optional | 2 | Number of cores to use for the emulator (hw.cpu.ncore in config.ini). |
sdcard-path-or-size |
Optional | N/A | Path to the SD card image for this AVD or the size of a new SD card image to create for this AVD, in KB or MB, denoted with K or M. - e.g. path/to/sdcard, or 1000M. |
avd-name |
Optional | test |
Custom AVD name used for creating the Android Virtual Device. |
emulator-options |
Optional | See below | Command-line options used when launching the emulator (replacing all default options) - e.g. -no-window -no-snapshot -camera-back emulated. |
disable-animations |
Optional | true |
Whether to disable animations - true or false. |
emulator-build |
Optional | N/A | Build number of a specific version of the emulator binary to use e.g. 6061023 for emulator v29.3.0.0. |
working-directory |
Optional | ./ |
A custom working directory - e.g. ./android if your root Gradle project is under the ./android sub-directory within your repository. |
ndk |
Optional | N/A | Version of NDK to install - e.g. 21.0.6113669
|
cmake |
Optional | N/A | Version of CMake to install - e.g. 3.10.2.4988404
|
script |
Required | N/A | Custom script to run - e.g. to run Android instrumented tests on the emulator: ./gradlew connectedCheck
|
Default emulator-options: -no-window -gpu swiftshader_indirect -no-snapshot -noaudio -no-boot-anim.
Can I use this action on Linux VMs?
The short answer is yes but it's expected to be a much worse experience (on some newer API levels it might not work at all) than running it on macOS.
For a longer answer please refer to this issue.
Who is using Android Emulator Runner?
These are some of the open-source projects using (or used) Android Emulator Runner:
- coil-kt/coil
- cashapp/sqldelight
- square/workflow-kotlin
- square/retrofit
- natario1/CameraView
- natario1/Transcoder
- chrisbanes/insetter
- slackhq/keeper
- android/compose-samples
- ReactiveCircus/streamlined
- ReactiveCircus/FlowBinding
- JakeWharton/RxBinding
- vinaygaba/Learn-Jetpack-Compose-By-Example
- ashishb/adb-enhanced
- vgaidarji/ci-matters
- simpledotorg/simple-android
- cashapp/copper
- square/radiography
- Shopify/android-testify
- square/leakcanary
- hash-checker/hash-checker
- hash-checker/hash-checker-lite]
- Kiwix/kiwix-android
- wikimedia/apps-android-wikipedia
If you are using Android Emulator Runner and want your project included in the list, please feel free to create an issue or open a pull request.