Automated experiment execution on Android devices

This tool is only tested on Ubuntu, but it should work in other linux distributions. You'll need:

• Python 2.7
• Android Debug Bridge (sudo apt install android-tools-adb)
• Android SDK Tools (sudo apt install monkeyrunner)
• JDK 8 (NOT JDK 9) (sudo apt install openjdk-8-jre)
• lxml (sudo apt install python-lxml)

Note: It is important that monkeyrunner shares the same adb the experiment is using. Otherwise, there will be an adb restart and output may be tainted by the notification.

Note 2: You can specifiy the path to ADB and/or Monkeyrunner in the experiment configuration. See the Experiment Configuration section below.

To run an experiment, run:

python android_runner your_config.json

There is an example configuration file in example/example_config.json

A JSON config that maps devices names to their ADB ids for easy reference in config files.

Below is a reference to the fields for the experiment configuration. It is not always updated.

adb_path string
Path to ADB. Example path: /opt/platform-tools/adb

monkeyrunner_path string
Path to Monkeyrunner. Example path: /opt/platform-tools/bin/monkeyrunner

type string
Type of the experiment. Can be web or native

replications positive integer
Number of times an experiment is run.

devices Array<String>
The names of devices to use. They will be translated into ids defined in devices.json.

paths Array<String>
The paths to the APKs/URLs to test with.

browsers Array<String>
Dependent on type = web
The names of browser(s) to use. Currently supported values are chrome.

profilers JSON
A JSON object to describe the profilers to be used and their arguments. Below is an example:

  "profilers": {
    "trepn": {
      "sample_interval": 100
    }
  }

scripts JSON
A JSON list of types and paths of scripts to run. Below is an example:

"scripts": {
  "before_experiment": "before_experiment.py",
  "before_run": "before_run.py",
  "interaction": "interaction.py",
  "after_run": "after_run.py",
  "after_experiment": "after_experiment.py"
}

Below are the supported types:

• before_experiment
  executes once before the first run
• before_run
  executes before every run
• interaction
  executes between the start and end of a run
• after_run
  executes after a run completes
• after_experiment
  executes once after the last run

The original thesis can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7Fel9yGl5-xc2lEWmNVYkU5d2c/view?usp=sharing

This happens when the user calling adb is not in the plugdev group.

sudo usermod -aG plugdev $LOGNAME

https://developer.android.com/studio/run/device.html
http://www.janosgyerik.com/adding-udev-rules-for-usb-debugging-android-devices/