Why am I required to do manually when before I didn't need to?

[AlbertoMeQ]

Hello!

2 months or so ago I had managed to setup appium + UIAutomator2. I just needed to install the driver (via NPM) and everything magically worked.

Today, I spent a few hours trying to understand why I kept getting the following error:

[debug] [Instrumentation] INSTRUMENTATION_STATUS: Error=Unable to find instrumentation info for: ComponentInfo{io.appium.uiautomator2.server.test/androidx.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner}
[debug] [Instrumentation] INSTRUMENTATION_STATUS: id=ActivityManagerService
[debug] [Instrumentation] INSTRUMENTATION_STATUS_CODE: -1
[debug] [Instrumentation] android.util.AndroidException: INSTRUMENTATION_FAILED: io.appium.uiautomator2.server.test/androidx.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner
[debug] [Instrumentation] 	at com.android.commands.am.Instrument.run(Instrument.java:524)
[debug] [Instrumentation] 	at com.android.commands.am.Am.runInstrument(Am.java:199)
[debug] [Instrumentation] 	at com.android.commands.am.Am.onRun(Am.java:80)
[debug] [Instrumentation] 	at com.android.internal.os.BaseCommand.run(BaseCommand.java:62)
[debug] [Instrumentation] 	at com.android.commands.am.Am.main(Am.java:50)
[debug] [Instrumentation] 	at com.android.internal.os.RuntimeInit.nativeFinishInit(Native Method)
[debug] [Instrumentation] 	at com.android.internal.os.RuntimeInit.main(RuntimeInit.java:355)
[debug] [Instrumentation] The process has exited with code 1

I managed to fix it by downloading this repository and following its steps (gradle clean assemble + manually install the 2 apks).

My question is: why is this now required for the automation to work when before all was nice and easy?

Also, I was planning to use appium and Browserstack but if I wouldn't be able to install the 2 apks manually every time. So, I must find a better solution.

Is this a bug somewhere else or is the new "workflow"?

[jlipps]

My question is: why is this now required for the automation to work when before all was nice and easy?

It is not required, no.

It's not clear that there is a bug. Make sure you have the latest version of Appium 2 and then try this with your device connected to clear everything out and upgrade the driver to the latest version:

appium driver run uiautomator2 reset
appium driver update uiautomator2

[AlbertoMeQ]

Hello @jlipps,

Thanks for the reply.

Here is the output of those commands:

$ appium driver run uiautomator2 reset
[STDERR] node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1056
[STDERR] throw err;
[STDERR] ^
[STDERR]
[STDERR] Error: Cannot find module '<MY_USER>/appium/node_modules/appium-uiautomator2-driver/scripts/reset.js'
[STDERR] at Module._resolveFilename (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1053:15)
[STDERR] at Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:898:27)
[STDERR] at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run_main:84:12)
[STDERR] at node:internal/main/run_main_module:23:47 {
[STDERR] code: 'MODULE_NOT_FOUND',
[STDERR] requireStack: []
[STDERR] }
[STDERR]
[STDERR] Node.js v19.4.0
✖ Encountered an error when running 'reset': Process ended with exitcode 1 (cmd: '/usr/local/bin/node scripts/reset.js')

=======

$ appium driver update uiautomator2
✔ Checking if driver 'uiautomator2' is updatable
✖ Checking if driver 'uiautomator2' needs an update
ℹ Update report:
ℹ - 'uiautomator2' had no updates available

[jlipps]

ok, try the latest uiautomator2 driver. it was not correctly exporting the reset script before.