Using Android monkeyrunner from Eclipse, both in Windows and Linux!

 

This time I want to use English to make this article useful for all others in the world:)

As you know, Android MonkeyRunner is a good testing tool, but we could only develop monkeyrunner under a text editor like Vim, emacs, etc.

Diego Torres Milano wrote a blog to make Monkeyrunner running on Eclipse, he had done that on Linux. But according to his article, he mislead guys thinking that his solution also works on Windows. But after serveral tries by myself and others’ comments, it does not work in Windows at all.

Here I found a solution which also works on Windows(I have tried it by myself). And I believe that it also works on Linux, as the solution does not include any platform independent mechanism. Here we go 

1. Install/Update latest PyDev (2.2.4 at present, I think it does not relate to the PyDev version) byEclipse Marketplace or direct install link, see guide here
2. Extract Lib folder in ANDROID_SDK\tools\lib\jython.jar using 7-Zip/WinRAR  to ANDROID_SDK\tools\lib folder, which would be like ANDROID_SDK\tools\lib\Lib
3. Add a Jython Interpreter under Window>Preferences>PyDev>Interpreter – Jython. Using the jython.jar from Android SDK\tools\lib folder.
4. Please notice that adding Android SDK\tools\lib and monkeyrunner.jar in Libraries. See snapshot below: 
5. Click “Apply” and wait it finish. Press “OK”
6. Now you can use this new MonkeyRunner Interpreter to set up a PyDev project. But please make sure to choose “Jython” and using Grammar version “2.5″ as Jython itself is not catching up with Python. The latest Jython is 2.5.2, but Android SDK uses 2.5.0. It’s OK to replace the old one with the latest one. That’s another story. Snapshot of project setup:
   

Now you could write MonkeyRunner script with convenient features like auto-completion, grammmer error notice etc. Have fun:)

Notice: you cannot click the Run button to execute monkeyrunner script, it will not use monkeyrunner.bat to execute.