Automation tags lost with multidex - why?
Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2019 5:27 pm
I have been working closely with a team of mobile developers to add unique automation identifiers to a fairly new Android app (less than a year old). The identifiers are populated in the ContentDescription field. Needless to say, this has made the process of building automated tests much easier.
The addition of several new features has pushed the app over the 65K method limit, so the latest version was built with multidex. In order to instrument this new version without errors, I had to add "-multidex" to the instrumentation flags. However, when looking at the new app version in Ranorex Spy, the ContentDescription values no longer match the previous non-multidexed version. I've attached screen shots of the same fields in Ranorex Spy before and after multidex. The developers swear they did not alter these values in any way, but what would cause them to change? Are there any additional instrumentation options that would restore these values?
The addition of several new features has pushed the app over the 65K method limit, so the latest version was built with multidex. In order to instrument this new version without errors, I had to add "-multidex" to the instrumentation flags. However, when looking at the new app version in Ranorex Spy, the ContentDescription values no longer match the previous non-multidexed version. I've attached screen shots of the same fields in Ranorex Spy before and after multidex. The developers swear they did not alter these values in any way, but what would cause them to change? Are there any additional instrumentation options that would restore these values?