Is there a way to only run a specific set of instrumentation tests in an Android Gradle project?

Question

I have an Android/Gradle project. Whenever I want to run tests, I run:

./gradlew connectedInstrumentTest

which runs all my tests under the test folder of my project.

My test folder has several automation tests as well as non-automation tests. I'm mostly interested in running the fast non-automation tests without the slow automation tests.

Is there a way to run just a specific set of tests, such as from one specific class or anything similar? I'm basically asking about any kind of separation so that I can choose to run just a few tests when I want to.

---

Created a sample project here.

Edit local.properties to point at your Android SDK.

Next, start up an emulator or connect a phone to your computer. Then you can run tests using ./gradlew connectedInstrumentTest --info. This runs all tests.

What I am unable to figure out is how to only run tests in, say, one class and not all tests.

Answer 1

Since Android Gradle Plugin 1.3.0

Starting from version 1.3.0 you can (finally!) specify the arguments the Android Gradle Plugin have to pass to the InstrumentationTestRunner.

For example, if you want to run only the tests annotated with @SmallTest and ignore the others:

android {
  //....
  defaultConfig {
  //....
    testInstrumentationRunner "android.support.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner"
    testInstrumentationRunnerArgument "size", "small"
  }
}

---

Old workaround Prior to plugin 1.3.0 is not possible to do that but I've found a little workaound. Basically I've annotated with the @SmallTest annotation the fast tests and using a custom subclass of the InstrumentationTestRunner I'm able to run just them and not the whole suite.

You can found the example code in this gist.