The document discusses the development and evolution of Appium, a mobile automation testing solution, highlighting the challenges faced in automating mobile applications and the community support that contributed to its growth. It outlines key milestones from its inception in 2012, through significant updates leading to Appium 1.0, and the increased adoption by various companies. The document emphasizes the importance of community engagement and future efforts focusing on documentation and project management improvements.

1. mobile automation made awesome
@AppiumDevs | @saucelabs
Live Panel / Core Committers Q&A
5/29/2014

2. Necessity is the mother of invention

3. The Problem
• Mistakes in iOS applications are expensive
• You have to live with bugs until the App Store has
approved the build with your fixes
•best case a couple of days
• Testing mobile phones is physically exhausting
• These things are designed to be used all day
•tiny keyboards
•tiny screens

4. Developing a Solution
• Why can’t we automate it, like we do with websites?
• Instruments UIAutomation has issues
• must be programmed in javascript
• must be run in a sandbox (no access to outside
world)
• control is scripted and non-realtime

5. The Solution
• use shell command method to talk to the outside word
• with friends like /bin/cat and python you can do
anything
• run commands using eval()
• make a real-time server
• repurpose the JSON wire protocol

6. Assembling supporters

7. Building Support
• April 2012
• Appium (called iOSAuto at the time) was demoed as
an SeConf 2012 Lightning talk
• November 2012
• Jason Huggins jumps in and helps rewrite the code
for the Mobile Test Summit
• January 2013
• Open Source project begins, Android support is
added

8. Gaining Traction
• June 2013
• Appium is presented at SeConf 2013 alongside
Selendroid, iOSDriver and others
• Result: Selenium project endorses freedom of choice
• May 2013
• Appium 1.0

9. World domination

10. Lessons Learned
• If at first you don’t succeed, rewrite the entire codebase
and try again
• The most awesome thing will win
• With a strong community, there’s going to be someone
who can solve that problem that you find impossible

11. appium 1.0 and beyond

12. The road to 1.0
• 16 months of hard work
• Starting code and community from scratch
• Many conferences and road trips to spread the word
• Amazing help from community contributors large and
small
• Surpassing all expectations and getting the attention of
the world
• OSS Rookie of the Year, anyone?

13. What’s new
• Stability
• New client libraries
• New, more sensible desired caps
• New Xpath support
• Android hybrid support
• New, more sensible locator strategies
• MultiAction gesture API
• New docs/tutorials

14. What’s new
• Companies large and small adopting Appium
• (Who says it’s not “battle-tested”?)
• appium-discuss list blowing up
• Moving to a new solution soon
• More and more community members contributing code
• Demand for support outpacing what a few of us can
handle

15. What’s next
• Major focus on doc/tutorial content---need to make
things easier for beginners and mobile novices
• Bugfixes
• More tests and a CI to run testsuite on every commit, for
improved quality and fewer regressions
• Systematizing project management, prioritizing new
directions for Appium
• Efforts to engage the community (you!) to pitch in and
make Appium better, and to help support each other
better

16. Recording of Live Panel with Core
Appium Contributors
Link:
https://saucelabsreview.webex.com/saucelabsr
eview/lsr.php?RCID=f6852510974c4cfe9fac26
53445fb5c2

17. appium.io
github.com/appium/appium
@AppiumDevs | @saucelabs
Q&A!