postbuild UIAutomation script not running in jenkins

Question

I am trying to do End-to-End automation for an iOS project. My aim is to automate the continuous integration process with attaching UIAutomation scripts as post build action. So from the time when a user do check his code in SVN and till we get test result of automation, everything will be automated.

Jenkins is installed on my local machine and running on localhost.
Now I have automated build process through jenkins and at other end I have my shell script ready which will run UIAutomation java scripts on build output.
When I use my shell script as post build action then I get error in running instrument command(written inside shell script) but if I run this script manually through terminal then it works fine.

instruments[64703:60f] -[NSAlert alertWithError:] called with nil NSError. A generic error message will be displayed, but the user deserves better.
_RegisterApplication(), FAILED TO establish the default connection to the WindowServer, _CGSDefaultConnection() is NULL. Mon Feb  6 13:15:20 inpunml310743 instruments[64703] <Error>: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged. 2012-02-06 13:15:20.179 instruments[64703:60f] Recording cancelled : At least one target failed to launch; aborting run Instruments Trace Error : Failed to start trace. Build step 'Execute shell' marked build as failure Finished: FAILURE

then i tried this command with sudo then I got following error sudo: no tty present and no askpass program specified

Please let me know how can I run these commands successful, only this step is left in my task.

Answer 1

Jenkins by default installs as a LaunchDaemon, which means it has insufficient permissions to launch WindowsServer.

You’ll need to configure it as a LaunchAgent:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.jenkins-ci.plist
sudo mv /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.jenkins-ci.plist /Library/LaunchAgents/org.jenkins-ci.plist

Then login as Jenkins and keep a session open.

If you don't know the Jenkins password you can change it with:

sudo passwd jenkins

Answer 2

Jenkins is running as a daemon and is therefore not allowed to connect to the window server. More info here http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2083/_index.html.

Answer 3

Sorry - not got time to put a complete answer now, will update later....

This is possible if you run jenkins as a user app rather than as a deamon -- this might come in handy (https://github.com/stisti/jenkins-app) I haven't tried it but looks like it should work -- I went down another route setting up an always logged in user, that ran jenkins from a login script, it did mean I had to re-install jenkins but managed to get it up and running... word of warning from someone thats been through it, are you using instruments for automated testing? If so, you'll need to do some transformation on the output so it displays in Jenkins.