Running Appium from Source

So you want to run Appium from source and help fix bugs and add features? Great! Just fork the project, make a change, and send a pull request! Please have a look at our Style Guide before getting to work. Please make sure the unit and functional tests pass before sending a pull request; for more information on how to run tests, keep reading!

Make sure you read and follow the setup instructions in the README first.

Setting up Appium from Source

An Appium setup involves the Appium server, which sends messages back and forth between your test code and devices/emulators, and a test script, written in whatever language binding exists that is compatible with Appium. Run an instance of an Appium server, and then run your test.

The quick way to get started:

git clone https://github.com/appium/appium.git
cd appium
npm install
gulp transpile # requires gulp, see below
npm install -g authorize-ios # for ios only
authorize-ios                # for ios only
node .

Hacking on Appium

Make sure you have ant, maven, adb installed and added to system PATH, also you would need the android-16 sdk (for Selendroid) and android-19 sdk installed. From your local repo's command prompt, install the following packages using the following commands (if you didn't install node using Homebrew, you might have to run npm with sudo privileges):

npm install -g mocha
npm install -g gulp
npm install -g gulp-cli
npm install -g appium-doctor && appium-doctor --dev
npm install
gulp transpile

The first two commands install test and build tools (sudo may not be necessary if you installed node.js via Homebrew). The third command verifies that all of the dependencies are set up correctly (since dependencies for building Appium are different from those for simply running Appium) and fourth command installs all app dependencies and builds supporting binaries and test apps. The final command transpiles all the code so that node can run it.

When pulling new code from GitHub, if there are changes to package.json it is necessary to remove the old dependencies and re-run npm install:

rm -rf node_modules
npm install
gulp transpile

At this point, you will be able to start the Appium server:

node .

See the server documentation for a full list of arguments.

Hacking with Appium for iOS

To avoid a security dialog that may appear when launching your iOS apps you'll have to modify your /etc/authorization file in one of two ways:

Manually modify the element following <allow-root> under <key>system.privilege.taskport</key> in your /etc/authorization file to <true/>.
Run the following command which automatically modifies your /etc/authorization file for you:

center npm install -g authorize-ios sudo authorize-ios

At this point, run:

rm -rf node-modules
npm install
gulp transpile

Now your Appium instance is ready to go. Run node . to kick up the Appium server.

Hacking with Appium for Android

Set up Appium by running:

rm -rf node-modules
npm install
gulp transpile

Make sure you have one and only one Android emulator or device running, e.g., by running this command in another process (assuming the emulator command is on your path):

emulator -avd <MyAvdName>

Now you are ready to run the Appium server via node ..

Making sure you're up to date

Since Appium uses dev versions of some packages, it often becomes necessary to install new npm packages or update various things. Running npm install will update everything necessary. You will also need to do this when Appium bumps its version up. Prior to running npm install it is recommended to remove all the old dependencies in the node_modules directory:

rm -rf node-modules
npm install
gulp transpile

Running Tests

First, check out our documentation on running tests in general Make sure your system is set up properly for the platforms you desire to test on.

Once your system is set up and your code is up to date, you can run unit tests with:

gulp once

You can run functional tests for all supported platforms (after ensuring that Appium is running in another window with node .) with:

gulp e2e-test

Before committing code, please run gulp once to execute some basic tests and check your changes against code quality standards.