Gordon

Gordon is an Android instrumentation test runner designed for speed, simplicity, and reliability. We built it because neither Spoon nor Fork were fast enough nor reliable enough for us, and in attempts to fork those libraries we found them to be too old and complicated to be worth modifying. So we wrote Gordon from the ground up, using modern Gradle functionality and Kotlin coroutines.

Key features

• Several pooling strategies (similar to what is offered by Fork)
• Smart retries (if configured)
• Flexible test filtering, configurable from Gradle or commandline
• JUnit and HTML reports

See also:

Better Android Instrumentation Testing with Gordon on ProAndroidDev

Setup

With Gradle plugins block

settings.gradle.kts of your root project

pluginManagement {
    repositories {
        gradlePluginPortal()
        google()
        mavenCentral()
    }

    plugins {
        id("com.banno.gordon") version "$gordonVersion"
    }
}

build.gradle.kts of any modules for which you want to run tests using Gordon

plugins {
    id("com.banno.gordon")
}

With old Gradle plugins syntax

build.gradle of your root project

buildscript {
    repositories {
        gradlePluginPortal()
        google()
        mavenCentral()
    }

    dependencies {
        classpath "com.banno.gordon:gordon-plugin:$gordonVersion"
    }
}

build.gradle of any modules for which you want to run tests using Gordon

apply plugin: "com.banno.gordon"

buildSrc

If you have a buildSrc module, you may also need to add the dependency there if you get aapt2 errors.

build.gradle.kts of your buildSrc module

repositories {
    gradlePluginPortal()
    google()
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    implementation("com.banno.gordon:gordon-plugin:$gordonVersion")
}

Configuring

build.gradle.kts of any module for which you've applied Gordon

import com.banno.gordon.PoolingStrategy

gordon {
    // Default is PoolingStrategy.PoolPerDevice
    poolingStrategy.set(PoolingStrategy.PhonesAndTablets)
    //or
    poolingStrategy.set(
        PoolingStrategy.Manual(
            mapOf(
                "poolOne" to setOf("deviceSerial1", "deviceSerial2"),
                "poolTwo" to setOf("deviceSerial3", "deviceSerial4")
            )
        )
    )

    // Default is unset (`-1`) - to use "tablet" characteristic instead of size
    tabletShortestWidthDp(720)

    // Default is 0
    retryQuota.set(2)

    // Default is 120_000 (2 minutes)
    installTimeoutMillis.set(180_000)

    // Default is 120_000 (2 minutes)
    testTimeoutMillis.set(60_000)

    // Default is no filter
    testFilter.set("ExampleTest.runThisMethod,RunThisWholeTestClass,com.example.runthispackage,com.example.RunTestsWithThisAnnotation")

    // Default is false - to ignore devices that failed during artifacts installation, may be useful with large number of devices and SinglePool strategy
    ignoreProblematicDevices.set(true)
}

Groovy build.gradle example for PoolingStrategy

import com.banno.gordon.PoolingStrategy

gordon {
    poolingStrategy.set(PoolingStrategy.PhonesAndTablets.INSTANCE)
    //or
    poolingStrategy.set(
            new PoolingStrategy.Manual(
                    [
                            "poolOne": ["deviceSerial1", "deviceSerial2"].toSet(),
                            "poolTwo": ["deviceSerial3", "deviceSerial4"].toSet()
                    ]
            )
    )
}

Pooling strategies

• PoolPerDevice - each device is its own pool, so each test will run on each device
• SinglePool - all devices make up one pool, so each test will run only once, on an unspecified device
• PhonesAndTablets - devices are split into pools based on type, so each test will run on one phone and one tablet
  • If the tabletShortestWidthDp property is set, devices with at least that dimension will be considered "tablets"
  • If tabletShortestWidthDp is not set, devices with tablet in their ro.build.characteristics build property will be considered "tablets"
• Manual - create your own pools with specific devices - each test will run on one device from each pool

Compatibility with Android extension

Gordon is compatible with most testing options that can be configured in the Android extension, including size/annotation/notAnnotation arguments and disabling animations for tests. Note that you can also specify annotations using Gordon's test filtering options instead of using instrumentation runner arguments.

Example build.gradle.kts

android {
    defaultConfig {
        testInstrumentationRunner = "androidx.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner"

        testInstrumentationRunnerArgument("size", "medium")
        testInstrumentationRunnerArgument("notAnnotation", "androidx.test.filters.FlakyTest")

        testOptions.animationsDisabled = true
    }
}

In this example, the AndroidX AndroidJUnitRunner will be used, animations will be disabled, and the only tests run will be those annotated with @MediumTest, but not @FlakyTest.

Running

Tasks

Gordon registers a Gradle task for each tested variant, stripping testBuildType (normally Debug) from the task name because it's redundant.

For example, if you have no flavors defined, the following task is registered:

• gordon - the equivalent of connectedDebugAndroidTest

If you have a mode dimension with demo and full flavors, plus a staging build type in addition to the standard debug and release types, and you set your testBuildType to staging, the following tasks are registered:

• gordonDemo - the equivalent of connectedDemoStagingAndroidTest
• gordonFull - the equivalent of connectedFullStagingAndroidTest

Filtering

There is a --tests commandline option that overrides the testFilter set in the gordon extension if both are specified.

Examples

• ./gradlew gordon
• ./gradlew gordon --tests=ExampleTest.runThisMethod
• ./gradlew gordon --tests=RunThisWholeTestClass
• ./gradlew gordon --tests=ExampleTest.runThisMethod,com.example.runthispackage
• ./gradlew gordon --tests=com.example.RunTestsWithThisAnnotation

Retries

If a retry quota is specified, Gordon will, after trying tests once, first retry any tests that were not able to run because of device issues, up to the specified quota per test case, and then retry any failing tests, up to the specified quota per test case. If multiple devices are available in a pool, a failing test will be retried on a different device from the one on which it originally failed.

Reports

Gordon generates junit reports in the build directory / test-results, and an HTML report in the build directory / reports.

Other notes

• See questions that have already been answered in the Q&A category of Discussions.
• Contributions are welcome! See the guidelines.

Why we named our test runner Gordon

License

   Copyright 2019 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.

   Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
   you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
   You may obtain a copy of the License at

       http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

   Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
   distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
   WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
   See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
   limitations under the License.