Run UI tests without installing and launching the app itself

[Sevastyan]

Use case

The problem

I want to run the UI tests without installing and booting up the app.

Details

But how? - one may ask. What would those UI tests be testing?
Answer: those would be a series of native actions, that indirectly test the app. Read on.

The initial problem that I have faced could be described in one sentence: "Cannot launch the app with a deep link". I have an app that is meant to be first booted via the URL (a deep link). The very first boot of the app relies on having an initial URL with which it was booted for its configuration. In other words, the primary (and only) path for the first user in my app is to receive an invitation URL, click on it, be redirected to a website, from which, if we are talking Apple ecosystem, he would be presented with an App Clip card, then App Clip, and then my full app.

Since patrol doesn't support booting the app with URL, but it has decent native features, I have thought of this: create a UI test that opens Safari, follows the invitation URL, and basically goes along the happy path described in the previous paragraph to get to the full app. The problem is: it seems like the iOS macro has been written to depend on app being installed before running any UI tests. This is not the case for Android!, where it behaves as it should (doesn't install, or, at least, doesn't booth the app).

So, my feature request is: "Allow running UI tests without installing and booting up the app on iOS".

Proposal

I expect this to be a new flag for the CLI:

patrol test --no-boot-app