android emulator open and close like IOS or browser

[alizelzele]

When appium is working with Browser or IOS, it will open a browser (simulator) at the start of session and close it at the end.

I am going to make android behave the same way. For example we can read deviceName and platformVersion and create AVD name according to these parameters, launch AVD (it needs these avds to be predefined [or maybe create avd if it did not find it!!]), and close it at the end of session.

this way the behavior will be almost the same as other platforms. What do you think about it? any suggestions?

[imurchie]

Appium already does this, if you specify the avd capability.

We don't want this to be the norm, since emulators take so much time to boot.

[alizelzele]

Avd opens the emulator if it is not already open, but it never close the emulator that it already opened.
As far as I experienced, if the android environment is configured correctly ( HAXM , KVM, ...) it almost starts as fast as IOS, and since for changing locale it does not shut down and start again, it is even a bit faster.

The problem is when you do not close android emulator, it freezes, or just stop respond to appium. The other problem is sometimes, emulator freeze on reload (this weird issue happens on yosemite OS, with android 6! after 2 or 3 restart !).

For not making it a norm, we can have a parameter defined ( like a boolean opts that decide if we should use this or not). also for making that happen, device name should be defined in android tests, which i believe does not do anything right now).

[rkavalap]

Issue moved to appium/appium #7406 via ZenHub