Working with the Amazon Linux 2 test environment for Android tests - AWS Device Farm

Working with the Amazon Linux 2 test environment for Android tests

AWS Device Farm utilizes Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) host machines running Amazon Linux 2 to execute Android tests. When you schedule a test run, Device Farm allocates a dedicated host for each device to independently run tests. The host machines terminate after the test run along with any generated artifacts.

The Amazon Linux 2 test host is the newest Android test environment, replacing the previous Ubuntu-based system. Using your test spec file, you can choose to run your Android tests on the Amazon Linux 2 environment.

The Amazon Linux 2 host provides several advantages:

  • Faster, more reliable testing: Compared to the legacy host, the new test host significantly improves test speed, especially reducing test start times. The Amazon Linux 2 host also demonstrates greater stability and reliability during testing.

  • Enhanced Remote Access for manual testing: Upgrades to the latest test host and improvements lead to lower latency and better video performance for Android manual testing.

  • Standard software version selection: Device Farm now standardizes major programming language support on the test host as well as Appium framework versions. For supported languages (currently Java, Python, Node.js, and Ruby) and Appium, the new test host provides long-term stable releases soon after launch. Centralized version management through the devicefarm-cli tool enables test spec file development with a consistent experience across frameworks.

Topics